This page shows how I create an illuminated manuscript. The page shown in these examples is an award scroll for a member of the SCA from my local group; you can read more about this scroll here.

This page is very graphics-intensive.

• Step i. Find inspiration.

When I'm creating a page for a particular person, I take into account their tastes and interests first and foremost. In this case, Lady Damiana has a Spanish persona, so I knew I wanted to create her page in a Spanish style. I am also interested in creating a more-or-less period look for my manuscripts; sometimes I make them as period as I can, other times I'm just going for a "periodesque" look. This manuscript will be somewhere in-between: I don't know much about Spanish manuscripts, so I start out knowing that I'm not going to get it exactly right. But what I can do is research. With the advent of the Internet scribes have so many more resources for this at our fingertips. I googled for "spanish manuscripts" and came up with an image of a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, from Spain sometime after 1366.

This manuscript provided me with the overall layout for my page, gave me some ideas about the style of whitework I'd use, and showed me some elements that were used in 14th century Spanish manuscripts: the acanthus leaves around the border, large illuminated capitals for major paragraph breaks, smaller versals for less-important paragraph changes (the "S" near the bottom right), red letters (called "rubrics") for other important words. This manuscript also has a shield with arms on it right at the bottom – perfect for using on this document, which would need to have the recipient's armory on it.

I also took note of the style of illumination used to decorate the large capitals, and the style of the large capitals themselves. I usually am not trying to recreate a piece exactly — to produce a replica of a period document— but combine the elements from a period piece in a new and artistic way that still resembles what a medieval mind could have produced.

• Step ii. Create the words.

Next I had to figure out what the document was going to say. SCA scrolls have certain formulas that have to be adhered to; certain awards, like an Award of Arms, have to say specific things to be valid "legal" documents. To increase the period-ness of this piece, I decided I'd like to have the words be in Spanish, since several of the Spanish manuscripts I'd looked at had Spanish text instead of Latin. I wrote an English text, and then, since I am far from fluent in Spanish, asked around online for some translation help. A friend of mine who is a former member of my local SCA group came through with a Spanish translation for me. I decided then that the first large illuminated letter would be a "G" and I decided that the last paragraph's starting "H" would become another, and I decided to recreate the original manuscript's versal "S" as well, since there was a convenient "S" starting off an important paragraph in my text.

• Step iii. Prepare the paper.

In this case, all I had to do was to cut a piece of paper (I use 140 lb. hot-press watercolor paper for most of my documents) to the right size; I knew I wanted to make this one somewhat large. I settled on an 11x14" size, which will fit into a standard 14x18 mat and frame, making it less expensive for the recipient to frame it properly. I use this fabulous chart created by one of my teachers to decide on a size for my pages.

• Step iv. Sketch the layout.

After cutting the paper, I taped it securely to my drafting table and drew my margins with a t-square and straightedge. I do all the preliminary work with a mechanical pencil with hard lead, which leaves relatively light marks that erase easily. In period, much of this work was often done with thin brown or red ink which then stayed on the final page.

I decided that, like the original manuscript, my text would be in two columns; using the square and a ruler, I laid out areas for the columns of text, the bars, the acanthus leaves, and the shield at the bottom. I also drew the square for the first illuminated "G"; after I had a better idea of how much space the calligraphy would take up, I'd know where the square for the "H" would go.

Because I would be gilding this scroll, I had to do some more sketchwork to begin with as well. I usually do the calligraphy before I do too much sketching, because it's easy to make mistakes when you're calligraphing, and sometimes those mistakes are much easier to throw out than fix – and you don't want to toss out five hours' worth of sketching because you messed up! But because gold will stick to anything moist, it is important to do things in the right order: layout before gold before calligraphy before paint. I figured out where the areas of gold would be, and did just enough sketching to make sure the gold would be in the right spots.

• Step v. Lay down the gesso.

Gilding gesso is basically the glue you use to glue a thin layer of gold to a piece of paper or parchment. I got mine from the Gabriel Guild at Pennsic, and it comes in little pink buttons that are full of lead. Don't eat them unless you like recreating the downfall of Rome: Yay heavy-metal poisoning!

This will be raised gilding (as opposed to flat gilding, which lays flat on the page.) When building up the gesso for raised gilding, it goes on best in thin layers that you build into a raised shape. I painted the little quatrefoils with thin layers of the gesso and let it dry for a few minutes in between coats.

When the final layer of gesso was on, I let it all dry overnight to make sure the gesso was really dry– you can't lay gold on damp gesso.

• Step iv. Lay down the gold.

The next step in gilding is to lay down the gold. After turning off the air conditioner and ceiling fan to eliminate any drafts, I placed a sheet of gold leaf on my gilder's cushion, a square block of wood with a padded suede surface. The suede grips the gold gently so that it won't slide around as much. Even a tiny bit of air movement can cause a sheet of gold leaf to blow away or get crumpled, so it's important to move slowly and carefully around the gold! I used a breathing tube to breathe a slow, hot, moist breath onto each spot of gesso, which gets it just very slightly sticky again. Then I placed a small piece of gold on top of the gesso, and using a sheet of glassine (thank you U.S. Postal Service!) I pressed the gold onto the gesso, where it stuck.

Using my burnisher (a bit of highly-polished bone in a wooden holder), I made sure the gold was stuck very well to the gesso. I also looked at the leaf through the glassine paper – if you've missed a spot of gold, the bare gesso underneath shows up darker than the surrounding areas. That way you can see if you've missed any spots. Anywhere that needs more gold gets breathed on again, and more gold gets stuck to it.

After all the areas of gesso were covered with layers of gold, I used a soft brush to brush away the extra leaf that wasn't stuck to gesso. Using the glassine and my burnisher, I then burnished the gold to a high shine.

• Step vi. Do a trial run on the calligraphy.

I wanted to use a Spanish style of calligraphy known as "rotunda" for the text, but I'd never done it before, so I sat down with my calligraphy book and taught myself how this new style was written. Then I marked up a piece of notebook paper with areas the same size as the areas on the page that I had set aside for the text, and did a trial run with the Spanish text, so I'd know how much room it would take up and could adjust the line widths and spacing to make it all fit just right.

• Step vii. Do the calligraphy.

Once I had made the trial run, I sat down at the drafting table and did the calligraphy. The main part of the text I did in black ink, but the recipient's name I wrote in red paint. Once I got to the spot where the big illuminated "H" would go, I took a break from the calligraphy and sketched in a box to hold its place, and then finished up the calligraphy.

As I went along, I made a few mistakes (three of them on this scroll, which was a really good number considering I was writing in a foreign language!) Fortunately I caught all three errors before I'd messed up more than one letter at a time, so I noted on my master copy of the text where I'd screwed up, so I wouldn't forget to fix them later. To the right you can see where I accidentally wrote "(s)aben" instead of "(s)abed"; once the ink dried I carefully wrote a "d" over the "n", matching up as many of the lines of the new letter to the old as I could.

Once the ink was really, really dry, I used my exacto knife to scrape away the parts of the "n" that weren't now part of the "d". This is the main reason for using such heavy paper -- you can make corrections more easily because there's more paper you can scrape away! Below you can see where I fixed a similar error later in the text. After scraping the ink and paper away, I used my burnisher to smooth down the scraped area as well as possible, making it harder to see and leaving no stray paper fibers around that would make the paint feather later.

• Step viii. Finish the sketching.

Once you've got the calligraphy done, it's safe to start doing more detailed sketching. I sketched in the acanthus leaves, the shield and Damiana's arms, and began to sketch in the illuminated letters. I also added the flowers and began to sketch the squirrel.

This step and step 9 can overlap somewhat, taking care not to smear any of the paint before it dries, of course! I will often sketch and re-sketch elements of a page many times during the creation process.

• Step ix. Start painting.

At this point I could also begin doing basic painting. I began by painting the background red and blue for the bars, painting the versal "S" and, since the colors would be simple and bold, I painted Damiana's arms in the shield, and added my maker's mark, the little red cross-crosslet that appears on each of my documents. On this page it appears just above the arms.

• Step x. Paint, paint, and paint some more.

This step is the bulk of the project, as the varied elements of the page get painted. The versal S got outlined in it's red frills, the initials got painted, and the acanthus started to take shape.

• Step xi. Clean up.

Once everything has been painted and the paint has dried very thoroughly, I go back over the lines and erase all the pencil marks with a kneadable eraser. Then I sign the back, adding any important information. I wrote my name, the name of my translator, the address of my webpage where I'd post the pictures, and a note about the source I used for inspiration. Since I used modern gouache for this one, I did not add any toxicity warnings, but if I use period paints, I usually add a line mentioning that it would not be prudent to lick this scroll (or to let your kids or pets play with it!)

And that's how a document gets made!

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Created 27 July 2004, all images and text copyright © Christopher Bogs 2004