I used Bombay black India Ink

• • Extant would have used oak gall ink. I used this type of ink because I wanted an ink that was archival, light proof, and fadeproof.  This is different from period ink because it may have some shellac dissolved in the ink

My scroll is painted in water color paints made by Winsor & Newton mixed with a proteinaceous binder in some parts. 

• Extant paints would be made out of a combination of mineral pigments and binders.  More detailed explanation on period paint compositions can be read here. The TL;DR version is as follows:

  • Blue paints are likely ground azurite and copper oxide

  • Clear/white paint is made out of glair and calcium carbonate.  Other variations can use zinc or lead white

  • Green paint is a combination of copper and copper-chlorine resinate

  • Red/brown paint can be made out of a combination of hematite, iron sulfide, lead sulfide and palmierite (lead-potassium-sulfur) compound

  • Black ink is iron gall ink, and was typically used for both calligraphy and sketching

• I drew the outline of the flowers in before completing the calligraphy.  The extant had the calligraphy completed decades before the illumination was added at a later time.  I started to sketch in the flowers to save time and to help me with establishing the layout of the page.

• The scroll was completed in graphite pencil instead of silver point.  I simply didn't have a silverpoint or a metal point pen to do the illustration.  It may be worth my while to invest in one for the future.

• I used a fountain pen for some of my calligraphy, the period material would have been a quill , but metal nib pens were also available too- just less commonly used

  • I used modern archival ink for my larger calligraphy, but I needed a smaller nib for the delicate writing at the bottom.  

  • Fountain pen was used because it was the best tool that I had available at the time to achieve the results that I wanted.  I was having too much trouble with issues of clogging, clumping and overall underperforming with my smaller nibs that I felt that using them with my available ink wouldn't achieve the results that I wanted based off of failed test swatches earlier that day.

• I used Micron pigment pens to cross hatch the shadows.  

  • This was a deliberate choice because I was having limited success with attempting to cross hatch with my paint brush.  I was becoming frustrated with the lack of paint my tiny brush was holding, and it kept producing jagged lines because I had to frequently stop to add more paint.  This is something that I will need to look into at a later time.  I suspect that the extant was crosshatched in ink versus watercolor. In the interest of time, I switched to Micron pen to produce the effect that I was looking for.

Continue to work on adjusting my lighting quality to match the extant so it's easier to draw a visual reference between the two.

Copper/Gold alloys were common in period, and were used to produce a lot of things in period.  This alloy was common in pre-Columbian cultures of South America.  I'm curious to learn the history of this metal alloy in a future project, and how it could turn up in a Flemish/Hungarian manuscript