The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The Portrait

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

"The diapering pattern of "roses" was painted with Ultramarine Blue first. Trying to get the paint to stick to the gold around the flowers was a real pain, and it had to do that as Aldith hadn't been able to get a good a line as when working the gold lightning bolts of Juan's scroll. The pattern had only been sketched in freehand at the start (a grid of squares was made and each flower is nothing more than four slightly oval circles centered in each square) and had gotten lopsided and sloppy in places. I had glair which had been made for the gilding and tucked away into the refrigerator. Supposedly the older the glair is, the better it works -- and this stuff worked great, despite smelling like, well, rotten eggs.

"Adding glair to paint turned out to be something more of an art than a science. Mixing the paint out of the tube with just glair made it too transparent, and a bit on the thick side. When the paint was mixed with less water than normal, with a dab of glair added, that it retained its opaque qualities yet stuck wonderfully to the gold leaf. The roses were done with the ultramarine, then a small dark oval of Prussian Blue was painted out from the center of the flower onto each petal. Finally, a very light tint of the ultramarine was used to outline each rose and make a small line into each petal.

"Backing off to study thing, the addition of all that blue improved things somewhat. Now the Visconti Hours was hauled out and I looked at all the variations of white-work scribbles done on the various large letters through the book. I chose a series of curlicues and started applying it to the middle of the large letter. Oh, yeah -- that was sure doing the trick! While that part was drying, I went back to the laurel wreathes and the Arms. Mixing glair with a dark green, all of the laurel leaves and the green half of the Arms were outlined, and the stem of the laurel branches were painted in on the left side roundel.

"Once more, I attempted to paint the dark reflections on the sword -- nope, still not right." -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

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