The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

First Underpainting

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

First Underpainting
I had learned when first working with the black illustration board that the black dye in the paper would come up; therefore any colored areas would have to be under painted. I had thought originally that the background of the sky and behind the text would be the black of the paper, but looking at many photographs of the aurora showed that very few were against a flat black sky. This was probably due to the settings on the camera but I liked the sort of twilight glow that usually appeared in these images so decided to paint in a blue sky turning to indigo and then an almost black near the top, and the color would be carried right up through the text.

That meant the entire sky area had to be under painted with Permanent White. Sigh. As I wanted the text and the sky to flow together, that meant the sky colored background had to be painted before the calligraphy could be done. A slight reversal of order as normally one sketches or blocks in the illumination (so as to determine what space will be left for the calligraphy to fit into) and then the calligraphy is inked in before the piece is painted. This is because if a mistake of a permanent nature (i.e., unfixable) is going to occur, it generally does so in the calligraphy. If the calligraphy is messed up, it hurts less to throw the entire thing away and start over again than it would if the piece had been painted beforehand.

At the time I couldn't decide whether to carry the dark color up behind the mantling to an arched upper edge or not, so the color was ended at the bottom edge of the achievement; final call would wait until after the mantling was painted. -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).