The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The Portrait

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

"After studying the scroll some more the day after the Scriptorium, I took up a pair of scissors and cut up the color study done for the marble. This was turned upside down and laid across the top of the scene. Yes, there was entirely too much sky in the upper part of the landscape. I drew a line across the top with a pencil and ruler, then got out the water and brushes. Working carefully, the blue paint was lifted up off the vellum (see Johann von Drachenfels' Laurel Scroll for details on the technique used, under the thumbnail titled '"Gendarme kay lay feex"). After the area dried, it was painted with a milky coat of diluted permanent white to seal the surface. After the white coat dried, a marble ceiling was painted in. This was basically a mirror image of the floor, except all of the colors were about two shades darker. The squaring off of the scene suddenly forced the perspective and gave the entire miniature a look of great depth, and balanced it with the vibrant area of color in the foreground figure.

"The Arms on the two roundels were painted in, along with the laurel leaves on the encircling wreathes. Each leaf was painted in two tones of green, the green in the leaves and the green in the Arms matched to the greens used in the landscape. Hmmm. That doesn't look too great, but maybe things will improve when some work is done on the big letter "B". The sword was worked a bit more, but I still wasn't happy with it.

"The plan was to do the the large encircling letter "B" in three shades of orange -- the tangerine orange on the inside of the letter, a darker orange on the middle, and a very dark reddish orange on the outside. The tangerine orange went on and I thought, "Boy, that is orange." But one shouldn't be hasty, so the rest of the oranges went on. As I looked at it I thought, "Holy frickin' bleep, this thing is really orange. D*mn it, I thought this would work, but now I don't know -- maybe Aldith was right. I'm never going to hear the end of it, and this is just going to suck out loud." What a sinking feeling!" -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

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