A Short Treatise on Similar Styles

Very recently, I was invited to teach a class at an event given by the fine shire of Falcon's Keep. "Well," thinks I, "that'll be a grand thing to do!" So I accepted, little realizing that Real Life (tm) would step in and make my preparations just a bit on the difficult side.

Nonetheless, I managed to get a class together. The following information is the basis of that class; I initially planned to have this article written to pass out at the time. Unable to reach that goal, I now present it to you, that all may share whatever worthy information it contains.

SECTION THE FIRST: I always like to remind beginning scribes of certain things at the start of classes, and these things are worth repeating here.

First: Be aware that the typical style of an SCA scroll is not historically correct. Generally speaking, the scroll that goes with the award is modeled on book illumination. In the period we study, individuals who were given the right to bear arms received a sealed document (i.e., marked with a seal) indicating their new status in life. These were legal papers that, while often somewhat embellished, were not at all done in the same style or with as formal a hand as the books made for wealthy patrons that we often use as our examples.

Second: the most useful tool that you will ever have in your scribal work is a good visual reference. A little story:

A friend of mine is the art editor for a national magazine; this magazine uses a lot of illustrated (rather than photographic) artwork. Consequently, my friend receives quite a lot--hundreds--of portfolios from artists seeking work every month. He goes through each portfolio, and, inevitably, he runs into someone who will proclaim proudly that he worked "straight out of his head." "Yep," my fiend will sagely say, "I can tell. Let me give you the best piece of advise you'll ever get. ALWAYS WORK FROM A REFERENCE." The problem, says Larry, is that you can't really tell what an image is supposed to look like unless you see it. Reference does not imply slavish imitation. It means having a visual reminder of where you're going and what it will look like when you get there. Even the very best artists always use a reference to do the final piece. This is why so many of them either have drawings from life or, in the modern era, photographs. Even da Vinci left book after book of preliminary drawings and sketches from life. These were his reference materials. References--get them, use them. The difference between a piece done with them and one done without them is plain even to the untrained eye.

This, then, is the advise of a professional artist with the power to make or break an illustrator's career: Don't ever think that you should work from your head. Even the very best artists understand and use the power of reference.

PART THE SECOND: During the Renaissance, the Italians deliberately moved away from the Gothic styles of the day, seeking to emulate the classic styles of the past they had so come to admire. The humanists took to reading the classic texts of ancient Greece and Rome, and somewhere along the way, they began to imitate the style of writing and page decoration found in some of those books. Unbeknownst to them, one very popular style--in fact the style that would eventually almost completely replace the "Gothic" styles of writing--was not, in fact, of Classical origin.

Instead, it was the hand created for and used by the Carolingian empire (circa 800 C.E., well after the fall of Rome!). While it is a fun bit of irony that the Italians would replace one style of the middle ages with another style of the middle ages, it is nonetheless true that the substitution was so effective that, even today, most books and writing in the western world continue to be based on the hand developed by the scribes of Charlemagne.

Our purpose now, however, is to create a piece of art based on the style that the Italians appropriated. "Goldvine" is the Carolingian/Ottonian original; "Whitevine" is the Italian modification. The styles are so similar that one can learn them both at the same time. Here is the short list of the differences: goldvine has gold vines whereas whitevine has white vines (well, duh, eh?), white vine has a further embellishment of small dots, goldvine is outlined in red whereas whitevine is outlined in black. That is pretty much it.

The color palette for this style:

gold
white
ultramarine blue+white
cadmium red medium
One of the following greens:
- windsor green+white+a touch of yellow.
- Viridian + White
- Sap Green Hue + a tiny bit of white

Yes, that's right, it takes 5 colors. Contributing to it's simplicity, it contains no complicated forms to draw, no shading of your paints, and little time to complete.

First, let's make a goldvine letter.

1. Draw a Versal or Uncial letter.
2. Insert cavities into the letter.

3. Sketch in the vines.

4. Weave the vines.
5. Outline the letter & clean up the drawing.

6. Paint the letter and the vines gold (easy way) or gild the letters and vines (a process requiring an article unto itself).
7. In the spaces, apply your blue, red, and green paints. Generally, the center sections are painted red and the remaining sections are painted blue or green as you fancy. The letter is the boundary of the painting.
8. When the above is dry, paint a thin red line along the gold work; this outline will clean up you work and re-establish the vine weave pattern.

YOU ARE DONE!
Time to completion: Ť to 1 hour.

Now, let's make the Whitevine letter.

1. Repeat steps 1, 3, 4, and 5, as above. Do note, however, that darn near no examples of Whitevine around an Uncial letter exist. You are better off with a Versal (Roman) letter.

2. Paint the letter gold or white; I usually chose to make the letter gold to provide contrast. Paint the vines white.
3. Paint the background of the letter as in step 7, above. Do note a difference here: the Whitevine letter occurs upon a blue field. Therefore, paint a thin amount of blue around the whole thing.
4. Embellish the color blocks on the interior of the letter thusly: on the blue and red block, paint 3 small white dots in a triangular pattern (estencle, for you heralds out there). On the green patches, paint the three dots gold.
5. Outline everything in black.

YOU ARE DONE!
Time: 45 minutes to 1.5 hours.

The time estimates are fairly conservative and reflect a middling amount of familiarity with your materials. In any event, take your time, and enjoy your work. Illumination is fun, and everyone, with patience, can enjoy it.

A couple of notes. Clever folks may notice that the instructions for whitevine appear to be missing a step in the first instruction--"insert cavities." In the interest of being up front and correct, I must point out that most of the examples I've seen of whitevine letters do not have cavities. The letters are usually solid gold, occasionally solid white. When I paint the initials as stand alone letters, I like to add the red sections to the letter; this suits my aesthetics, but others may prefer to forgo this. Additionally, whitevine letters generally do not have their vines attached to the letter, whereas goldvines do; there is also greater variation in the "flowers" at the end of white vines versus goldvines. In the interest of absolute correctness, I am pointing these things out. While the letters are pleasing, whether you attend these small differences or not, I encourage you to also do some study in the following references.

Annotated Bibliography

The following books will assist you in painting in the above styles.

Alexander, J.J. THE DECORATED LETTER. George Braziller, Inc:New York, 1978. ISBN: 0-8076-0895-5 (paperback)

Plates # 10-14 feature various incarnations of goldvine letters, of lesser and greater quality. This is one of the few books that features more than one example in color. A very useful visual reference for any scribe.

--------------, editor. THE PAINTED PAGE: ITALIAN RENAISSANCE BOOK ILLUMINATION 1450-1550. Prestel-Verlag:Munich & New York, 1994. ISBN: 3-7913-1385-1

This is a superb book--and quite costly. As the title implies, it contains a plethora of exceptional examples of the work of the last phases of Italian manuscript painting. There are Whitevine examples scattered throughout: catalogue (rather than introductory) plates 9, 10, 12, 30, 34, 50, 58, 62.

Berkovits, Ilona. ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE LIBRARY OF MATTHIAS CORVINUS. Corvina:Budapest, 1964. No ISBN given.