Seeing With a “Medieval Eye”
By Lady Saerlaith ingen Chennetig
When you look at an award scroll, what makes it look like it’s from the pages of a
medieval manuscript?
Ever see a scroll that makes you think of modern fantasy art?
How about a scroll that you can instantly recognize what manuscript inspired it?
Or a scroll that seems a little bit “off”, but you can’t quite put your finger on it?
These are some of the questions that we ask ourselves when looking at award scrolls
and it helps us to develop our “medieval eye”. What is a “medieval eye” you ask? It’s the
ability to look at artwork and be able to distinguish what makes it look medieval versus
what makes it look modern.
How can you develop your medieval eye? It’s a constant learning process and with
everything we learn it helps us to improve our “eye” and our work as scribes.
One of the first steps is to learn the styles of illumination and the scripts that were
used with that style. Just picture in your mind a lovely piece of Celtic illumination. Now
what style script would you use - Insular Half Uncial (aka Celtic Roundhand) or a nice
Arabic script? The Arabic script would look out of place. Or you’ve found a lovely piece of
illumination that you want to use for an award scroll, but you’re not sure what script was
used. The Art of Calligraphy by David Harris and The Illuminated Alphabet by Timothy
Noad & Patricia Seligman are both excellent resources for matching up scripts when you’re
not sure which one to use with a particular style of illumination.
The paper that you use to create your scrolls can also have an impact on how a scroll
“looks”. Compare different kinds of paper with vellum or pergamenata. One big difference
between the two besides the look is how the paint reacts. With paper, the paint soaks in.
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With vellum or pergamenata, the paints sits on top of the surface. Take some scrap pieces
of paper and pergamenata and paint on them. Is there a difference in how it looks?
Color is another important step in developing your “medieval eye” and it can be a very
tricky step! We use books and websites as our primary sources for inspiration. Often the
colors are not true to the original manuscript. These days more and more publishers are
making an effort to get the colors as close as possible. The Illuminated Page by Janet
Backhouse is a good place to look to get more of a sense of the true colors of a manuscript.
The next step is to discover what colors go with a particular style of illumination. Imagine
a lovely manuscript page with bar-and-ivy on the border. Typical colors in a bar-and-ivy
style are blue and red, with white work done on top of the bars. Not a neon orange and
brown or pale pink and olive green. It might taking some playing with your paint palette
to get the colors “right”, but the closer you can get to the original colors, it will put you one
step closer to getting that medieval “look”.
Consider your inspiration sources. Are you trying to re-create a page from a
manuscript that is from the Middle Ages? Be careful what books you use as a resource.
There are some books that are influenced by the Victorians – who liked to change things to
suit themselves and pass it off as “medieval”. There are many good books out there that
show lots of examples of medieval manuscripts. Here are three excellent resources:
The Illuminated Page by Janet Backhouse
Codices Illustres by Ingo F. Walther
A History of Illuminated Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
To outline or not to outline? It’s the eternal question when illuminating a scroll.
Have
you heard any of these phrases before? “Outlining makes it look like a cartoon.” “Never
outline your work, it wasn’t done.” “Everything in the Middle Ages was outlined!” Use your
inspiration piece to guide you when it comes to outlining. It can be one of the final pieces
to help your scroll look “medieval”. Is there outlining? Sometimes it’s very faint,
sometimes it’s very bold. Sometimes there is no outlining at all. Is the outlining black,
sepia or just a slightly darker shade of the main color? Outlining when there was no outline
in the inspiration piece or doing the opposite, not outlining when it’s obvious there is
outlining can all attribute to a scroll looking a bit “off”. Sometimes it’s the little details that
make a difference in the overall look of a scroll.
Fixing scrolls. No, not fixing mistakes. It can be hard to not want to “fix” how a
manuscript page/scroll looks. Looking at a manuscript you see might see that the
proportions of the figure is wrong. Or maybe, you see if you just tweak it a little here and
there, it won’t look so “flat”. By changing those elements you are making it “modern” and
not “medieval”.
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Which leads us into copying. Some scribes don’t like to “copy” the work of others, so
they try to do scrolls giving it their own “flair”. Sometimes this works, sometimes it
doesn’t. In the Middle Ages, in order to learn a style of illumination, the apprentices had to
copy their master’s work for years before being allowed to create their own pieces. One
way to get the “feel” of a medieval manuscript page is to try and re-create it as closely as
possible. Through practice and patience you will begin to understand how a style is drawn,
what elements are found in it, what isn’t, the correct color palette to use, keeping the
elements in scale with the calligraphy. For fun, try to recreate a page, not to create a scroll,
but try to make a copy as close as you can, including the calligraphy. (This is a good
exercise in learning about a style, but also makes a lovely piece to hang on your wall, give
as a gift or even enter in an A&S competition.)
Have you ever inspected a manuscript page? There are many ways to do this. And
many reasons why to do it. Get down to the nitty gritty of a page and really see what
elements are there. Pull out that old magnifying glass and take some time looking at the
page. Don’t have a magnifying glass? Scan the picture at a high resolution and then you can
zoom in. Or go to the local copy store and get enlargements. Do you see something you’ve
never noticed before? Maybe it’s some subtle shading. Or that squiggly line is really tiny
letters forming a phrase. Incorporating these small elements into your scroll adds to
overall effect and before you know it, your scroll looks more “medieval”!
Training that “medieval eye” takes time and is a constant learning process. There are
always new things to learn about manuscripts! One more thing that helps you to realize
that your “medieval eye” is improving is the record of your own work. Keep photocopies or
scans of your work and compare them occasionally. Maybe even do a similar scroll to one
you did two years ago. I bet you can see subtle or maybe not so subtle differences. Talk to
other scribes and ask them how and what they’ve seen improve on their own scrolls.
Listening to other scribes and illuminators can also give you insights that you might not
have known about or noticed.
Have fun training your “medieval eye”!
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