baroque_mongoose | Entries tagged with calligraphy

We have the Yule Ball coming up, in the grand tradition of Christmas-related events starting when you're still barely into Advent. It's the first weekend in December; it's actually in our (SCA) shire, so the travel distance isn't too horrible this time (unlike the last SCA event I went to, when we were held up for quite some time on the journey back); and there is, among other things, a scribal competition.

Well, in fact, it's really an illumination competition, because what we're being asked to produce is scroll blanks. These are illuminated manuscript sheets which can later be scribed up as scrolls (in the SCA sense, as previously defined). There are several reasons for needing these. You might have a fine calligrapher who isn't that confident at doing illumination; or you might need a scroll in a hurry, and although the calligrapher can illuminate, they don't have time to do both parts. For the purpose of this competition you can do a blank either with or without an elaborate first letter. I've chosen to do a B, because "Be it known" is a pretty good all-purpose way to kick off the wording (and the one I use myself if I have any choice in the matter).

Beyond that, all you really need do is ensure you're using pergamentata of a certain weight (I'm using 230 gsm, the heaviest quality, which is a lot nicer to handle than the 160 gsm, which is also acceptable). Or you can use a similar quality of archival-standard paper; but you know you're safe with perg, plus it looks nice, plus if you're really not confident about your artwork it's translucent enough that you can trace through it, even at 230 gsm. (I haven't yet needed to do that, but I don't rule it out.)

Illumination is basically what your 0.7 mm dip pen nib is for. You're never going to use that for calligraphy because you need a wide line for that (unless, of course, you go in for what's known as "secretary hand", but I can never get that to look neat - mind you, neither did the mediaeval scribes, so I suppose it isn't a prerequisite, but I'm not going to attempt to use it for scrolls). The general rule for illumination, unless you have a much steadier hand than I do, is that you do your outlining with the narrow dip pen nib and most of your filling-in with a brush, though if you have very detailed and complex areas to fill you might want the narrow nib for that too.

This particular piece is building organically, rather like a story. When I write a story, I start with the characters and a very basic outline, then I let the characters do their own thing and see what happens; they'll always do a better job of driving the plot than I can. This is similar. My "characters" this time were the large initial B, some Celtic knotwork, and the mediaeval symbols for the four Evangelists - these being a winged man for Matthew, a winged lion for Mark, a winged ox for Luke, and an eagle for John.

So, obviously, the first thing to do was to draw a large cartouche at top left for the initial, and three smaller ones in the remaining corners. Matthew's symbol, being more vertical than the others, could go in the cartouche with the B (in fact, I ended up with the man standing behind it and looking through the top of it, holding lightly onto the letter's vertical stroke with his right hand), and the other three could go round clockwise from there. I left actually drawing them in till I'd done the knotwork, which connected the letter cartouche to the one below it and then that one to the one at bottom right; I'm leaving the other two sides more open, but will add some light naturalistic decoration (I'm considering vines at the moment). There is a special trick for doing knotwork, and it is to start by marking out the centres of the negative spaces (ie those between the lines of knotwork); do that and you will get it nice and even.

I had to do a fair bit of pre-sketching before I was confident not only to draw the Evangelist symbols, but to fit them into their little cartouches (Matthew has more room, but the rest are only 3.5 cm square). That, though, is now all done (Luke gave me the most problems; I do not rock at drawing oxen), and I've done most of the gilding, including their haloes. Because my gold ink is both opaque and water-resistant, it makes sense to apply that first, before doing any of the other colours.

So that's where I am at the moment. I have a little under two weeks to get it finished, and I think I should manage it, especially since the new set of dedicated scribal brushes showed up today (I hadn't been expecting them till Friday). It is hugely stress-relieving, because it requires 100% concentration.

I think I'd have made a fairly decent mediaeval monk.

Current Mood: artistic

My Best Online Friend is very good at a number of things, and one of them is vectors. Not the mathematical kind (well, she may be good with those as well; she's quite the all-rounder), but the graphical kind. She knows all about vector design and bezier curves and all sorts of stuff like that, which I have only a vague idea about.

So, when she saw my Carolingian minuscule, she decided it would be fun to turn it into a font for the computer. That way, I get to play with scroll layouts in GIMP without having to mess about using a lot of scrap paper, and she gets a nice font to use on posters and the like. It's a win-win. I wrote out the standard minuscule letters the other day, but I was so excited about the project that I didn't think to wait till the ink was dry before taking the photo, so there were some shiny bits; nonetheless, she still managed to work round those. Today she asked me for the capitals and the punctuation, so I was determined not to make the same mistake twice.

There is one little problem with Carolingian. It's not called "minuscule" for nothing. It doesn't actually have a standard set of capital letters. Mediaeval scribes generally used uncials, but there is a certain amount of leeway. I decided that what I wanted was an upper case alphabet which was internally consistent and fitted well with the minuscules; so what I have evolved is a mixture of uncial letters, larger versions of the minuscule letters (like the A, for instance), and hybrids like my capital R (it's just an ordinary capital R, but styled to match the capital F, which in turn is a larger version of the minuscule f). It looks right, both in itself and with the minuscules, so that's what we're using.

Carolingian punctuation is very much its own thing. It doesn't look like modern punctuation at all. The basic punctuation mark is a simple dot, but level with the tops of the small minuscule letters rather than on the base line; and that's not a full stop but a comma. The full stop is the same mark with something like a 7 underneath it. The semicolon is the comma mark with a tilde over it, and the question mark is the comma mark with a slanted tilde (bottom left to top right). They don't seem to have had an exclamation mark, so I improvised one in my practice samples, but I can't see one being needed for scrolls.

I am very much looking forward to this. I'm rather short of useful fancier fonts on my laptop; I habitually use Linux Biolinum, and even that I had to download. There is a whole slew of pre-installed Noto fonts covering every script you can think of and some besides; but, while I'll concede that Malayalam script is very beautiful, I can't actually read it. So a few more fonts I can use for English (or, for that matter, Italian) would be helpful.

It really is a perfect collaboration. She can do vector graphics but not calligraphy, and I can do calligraphy but not vector graphics. I'm immediately reminded of the academic I had the good fortune to be PA to for a while; he was brilliant at all the things I was bad at and vice versa, so we were a formidable team. Except in this case it's a little different, because there are quite a few things we're both good at; even so, this particular collaboration makes me exceedingly happy.

Current Mood: excited

Things are, as you'll have noticed, pretty stressful at the moment for a number of reasons; but the calligraphy does help with that, and I'm happy to be able to report that last night I was assigned my very first scroll.

I say "scroll", but it isn't really. A scroll, technically, should be a thing you roll up; but in the SCA, when anyone says "scroll", everyone understands that what is meant is a beautifully calligraphed and illuminated award certificate which can be framed, should the recipient so desire. They're usually A4 size, at any rate in this country, but I've seen them other sizes, and even with somewhat unusual shapes (one of the scrolls handed out at the Crown Tourney was a parallelogram). I'm quite used to referring to that as a "scroll", but it's as well to make it absolutely clear what is meant, for the benefit of those not in the SCA.

I think I've mentioned this before, but, as a reminder, in the SCA people get awards for all sorts of things; and this particular scroll that I am doing is what is called an Award of Arms. This is something everyone gets after a while, usually after being in the SCA for about a year. I didn't get one when I was a member previously, but then I'm not sure many other members even knew I existed, because circumstances were very different at that point; now that I'm much more able to get involved, I can reasonably expect to get one after a while. This award is basically saying "yay for you, you're doing great, keep it up", and it gives you the right to the title of Lord/Lady/Noble, whichever one works for you.

I'm not illuminating this one myself because there isn't really time; the scroll is needed for the Yule Ball, which is only just over three weeks away. So our signet has sent me a couple of scroll blanks, which means pre-illuminated sheets of pergamenata (an excellent, 100% vegan, and eye-wateringly expensive parchment substitute; I have just bought some myself). I was also expecting to be sent the wording to use, but no, apparently that's not how it works. They send you the name of the recipient, some information about what they've been doing in the SCA, the nature and date of the award, and who exactly is doing the awarding (not a given - we are a principality which is part of a larger realm, so in this case it is the Prince and Princess who are awarding, but it may be the King and Queen). You then come up with your own appropriately fancy mediaeval wording. Since it's my first scroll, I ran said wording by our signet just to check; he's very happy with it, so I'll be starting shortly.

I will not, of course, start by writing straight on the scroll blank. There will be a lot of pre-testing involved to make sure I have the lettering the right size (which may mean fiddling about with different nibs, but in any case I'll be doing pencil samples to start with). Once I'm completely happy with it, then I copy it over to the blank, adding colour as required (possibly red for initial capitals, and gold for the recipient's name). And, once it's done, I can get on with creating more scroll blanks at my leisure. It's a bit like priming the scribal pump, really.

I do many crafts (too many, if I'm honest); but calligraphy is the one that requires by far the most intense concentration, and therefore it's the best stress reliever. I can just zone out doing calligraphy. I can knit, sew, or do almost anything else with my mind at least partly on other things, but calligraphy? You focus. You have to. If you don't, you are going to make a mistake, and we don't want that on someone's lovely piece of illumination.

Hopefully by the time it's been presented, I'll have found somewhere I can upload a photo to show you. I'm obviously not showing anyone till then!

Current Mood: artistic

This laptop has been ailing for a little while. To be honest it's never been great; it's a Friday afternoon job that has been kept going by my amazing computer guru for far longer than anyone would have expected. (My amazing computer guru is Leah Rowe of Minifree Ltd: https://minifree.org/ I know, the website looks like pants, but it doesn't matter - if you want a good Linux machine that doesn't have a load of bloatware or privacy invasion software, Leah is your bod.)

So I have been trying to explain to Leah by e-mail that I need a new laptop. Leah, however, while an absolute whiz with computers, is also the most absent-minded person I know bar none. Did I mention that d'Artagnan is absent-minded? He has nothing on Leah. Consequently, the message was not getting through. Leah had somehow got it through their head that I wanted a repair. (I do want a repair, because I'm hoping that this thing can at least be fettled up enough to use as emergency back-up; but the main thing is the new laptop.)

This morning, it crashed, and I could not get it started again. I'd been expecting that, but it was still about the worst possible timing. Fortunately I have Leah's number written down on a piece of paper (not stored in the laptop!), so I rang them up and explained the situation. When I told them what was on the screen, they didn't even bother trying to talk me through trying to get it booted again - that was dead, short of a professional fix.

So I ordered a new laptop and said I'd pay as soon as I could get onto another machine to do it, and rang some friends and arranged to go round and borrow a laptop later. I then had to go and have my annual blood test, which is usually a fraught affair, because I am so hard to get blood from that I should probably change my name to Stone. I was really not looking forward to it. Usually it takes several attempts, and I'm one of those people whose blood pressure tanks under stress, so then I feel faint and it's all fairly awful. But this time it went miraculously right; I was straight in and out like a normal person. It worked first time and I didn't feel a thing. On the way to my friends' house I passed my own house, and it just so happened that our regular postie was outside it in her van. She saw me coming, got out of the van, and said, "Oh, I've got a couple of things for you I couldn't deliver because you weren't in." So I had her pop them into the bag on the back of my scooter for me; and I was so glad about that, because one of them was my new calligraphy stuff, and I am finding calligraphy extremely good for de-stressing at the moment.

I went round to my friends' house, where they'd got the laptop set up for me. It was Windows, and I'm not used to that, but what I mainly needed to do was get into my e-mail and my bank account. I paid for the new laptop, sorted out Ocado, did the last food record in that food survey, e-mailed everyone who needed e-mailing, and noted down the phone number for the taxi company. When I got home, I had lunch, booked the taxi, and rang my sister, who wanted me to text her something so she had it in writing. So I looked at my mobile phone, which I rarely use, and discovered the battery was extremely low. It charges using a USB connection through the laptop (I don't have one straight to the wall socket), and of course the power was now off so I couldn't charge it.

My sister eventually wrote down the thing she needed me to tell her, and later I thought that perhaps if I powered up the laptop again, the mobile might still charge even though the laptop didn't work. So I did. And, to my absolute astonishment, the laptop booted.

I'm not expecting this state of affairs to last very long; but it will, at the very least, give me time to back up those files that are in constant use and which therefore haven't been backed up since I did the full back-up maybe a week or two ago. For that I'm deeply grateful. (Oddly enough, our pastor's wife has an exactly similar story about an apparently dead laptop.) But at least if I don't post tomorrow, you'll know that I Aten't Ded. It's just the laptop!

Current Mood: thankful

Since my late teens I've done a basic calligraphy hand. It's pretty, but it's fairly simple and definitely modern. But since rejoining the SCA, I've had the itch to do scrolls, and so...

...oh, wait. Hold up. Let me backtrack a bit.

When I lived in Sheffield, I was in the SCA for a while; but I eventually let my membership lapse out of sheer frustration, because I couldn't get to any events. I think I was the only member in the whole of Sheffield at the time. The SCA, for those who don't know, is the Society for Creative Anachronism, and it often uses the tagline "the Middle Ages as they should have been". So we're more like living history than serious re-enactment; and, in particular, we're the Middle Ages with insulin and wheelchairs (and, in my case, colostomy bags, which is why I picked the specific time and place I did - I need emergency Sibyl access available at all times, so I went for Celtic British around 500 AD, because that means I can wear a tunic over something that looks like a robe but is actually a top and skirt). However, not so very long ago I discovered that there's an active chapter down here, so the moment I found out they could cope with the wheelchair I was back in like a shot. (I'm also not the only person in our shire who's in a wheelchair.)

And in the SCA, people get awards. Rather frequently. They get awards for things like fighting skill, creative stuff (known as "Arts & Sciences", or A&S for short), service, particularly awesome contributions to events, and all sorts of other things; and whenever anyone gets an award, they get a beautiful illuminated scroll to go with it. I can already do illumination, though it goes without saying I'm slow (that is not really a thing anyone can do very fast). But to do a full scroll, I also needed a mediaeval hand.

I asked for suggestions based on similarity to my modern calligraphic hand, and was initially pointed to uncials. So I tried, but I couldn't get on with them, and I decided there must be something else that would work better; and after a little while I found it. It is Carolingian (otherwise known as Caroline) minuscule, and anyone interested can learn to write it here: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/23/how-to-write-caroline-minuscule/ (I have temporarily forgotten how to do "a href" tags. It'll come back to me when I have the headspace.)

After about an hour's practice I ended up with a piece of script that looked promising, but rather shaky. The letter h wasn't quite right (rather than matching i, l, m, and n, it matched p and f, which in this script both have descenders below the base line), and my spacing was a little off in places - largely due to the letter d, because you make the descending stroke before you make the bowl, so you have to allow space for that. However, today we had a church lunch, so I knew there was going to be a lot of sitting around. I therefore took my notebook and practice pen (I use a Pilot Parallel pen for practice, which is very good) to church, and while we were all hanging around after the service I got them out and started another sample. That was much better. I'm happy with it. I'd post it here if I had image hosting, but I don't at the moment.

I like to use Tolkien's poetry for practice because I have a lot of it in my head. I deliberately memorised some of it during my A-levels, because I knew very well that a) I was going to finish early, b) there were only so many times I could check and re-check my answers without doing my head in, and c) they weren't going to let me out of the hall till the exam had finished; so that was my sanity saver, because obviously they didn't let you bring in a book. Or even your knitting. But another thing I do in the SCA is what they call "bardic", which actually covers all forms of entertainment (we even have a few stage magicians), but I sing and recite. And what you sing in the SCA is either actual mediaeval repertoire (of which I know enough to keep me going for the moment), or songs actually written in the SCA, or... anything else that fits. Tolkien is very much considered to fit; and it is not widely known that Sam Gamgee's song about the troll has a tune. It does, in fact, and I sing it. It's an old English folk tune that originally had some rather ho-hum words about a fox stealing a goose, and the moment I read the troll song for the first time, I knew at once that that was what had been going through Tolkien's head when he wrote it. (Tolkien's words are much better, and funnier, than the original!) And because I've been singing that quite a lot, I now have it off by heart, which also makes it useful for scribal practice.

And, of course, there are also the fibre crafts. I do pretty much everything in the SCA but fight. It's not just that it's rather difficult to muck about with a rattan sword in a wheelchair; it never appealed that much even before that. But it is surprisingly skilful, therefore quite a lot of fun to watch!