Hours of the Virgin, Office of the Dead

Ms. book of hours, Rome use (Hours of the Virgin, Office of the Dead); written and illuminated in Paris, France, early 16th century. MS M.1114 fol. 73v

http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/18/160797

Original:

Some of my friends were interested in seeing progress pictures of each step I do when creating scrolls. I am still learning a lot and I am sure I not doing things "correctly" but hopefully progress pictures can help give people some insight on how I paint.

1. I forgot to take a picture of the line drawing but this it the first pass of solid background colors.

2. Some darker lines have been added to the green vines

3. Close up of the dark green before shading

4. another closeup of the dark green.

5. White had been applied to various highlights on strawberries and flowers and blurred along with blurred dark green.

6. I like to do shading straight on the paper sometimes. After i had added the dark green shadowing I used a clean brush with a tiny bit of water and blurred the edge between the colors. Similar to how you would blur charcoal or pencil drawings with your finger or a smudge stick. I did the same technique to the strawberries and flowers.

7.

8. I have added a few more passes of high lights and low lights do give the vies some more definition. Also I added the yellow border all around. In this picture you can see that I made a mistake and changed my mind. I was going to add a black line outside the yellow but i was tired and my hand jerked and the line went all over the place. I fixed the mistake as best as I could by adding some water to the black and soaking it up with a tissue. It almost erased all the black but of course left a blurry line which I simply painted over once it was dry.

9. Finished piece. Well almost. i am still debating on whether or not i am going to add in the little dots in the background of the original. My original reference picture was too blurry to see any definition on the dots. Also since this one turned out a bit "smoother" in the over all look as opposed to the red one from the same manuscript (https://pippilongstokin.wixsite.com/scrolls/blog/hours-of-the-virgin-office-of-the-dead). I think the dots will be too "jarring" for this aesthetic.