This past Wednesday workshop was fun. It was the first time since elementary school that I worked with watercolors. Although I was excited about working with a new medium, I spent too much time focused on the aesthetics of my letter. Unfortunately I was unable to even get started on my watercoloring.
I decided to do the letter F. I took a different approach and instead of making my letter rigid with straight lines, I made everything cursive. This change in style was mostly likely what caused the most time consumption during the scriptorium. I spent too much time making sure certain areas of my drawings did not look awkward. Another dilemma that I seemed to have was deciding the size of my illuminated letter. The size might have also contributed to the time spent drawing. Although many might disagree, I believe that the scriptorium workshop enabled us to notice the amount of time it takes to illuminate anything. While it might look simple, it really isn’t. Many decisions need to be made before creating and illuminating a letter. I believe I may disregarded some decisions that may have prevented me from finishing my illuminated letter. What do you think? Was there anything you could have done better before creating your letter?
I completely agree with you about how this entire process really gave me better insight and appreciaton for the illumination process. Looking back, I also would have chosen to spend my time more evenly between detailing my letter and appying the color and gold leaf. I agree that this process was incredibly helpful to do after reading about and viewing different forms of illuminated manuscripts.
Araesli,
We definitely gained an appreciation for the time it takes to create an illuminated manuscript. And even in the brief time we had I struggled to decide what to embellish my letter with. Without a manuscript to illuminate I fear my embellishments were pointless.
I shared your troubles in deciding how large to make the letter. I ended up making it the size of the whole page which is obviously not reflective of a real anthropomorphic letter within an illuminated manuscript.