Our class experience today was both educational and entertaining. Working with medieval pigments and attempting to create illuminated art was eye opening for a couple of reasons…

– Creating artful images was far more difficult than I perceived. I assumed that the inspiration would flow and my historiated letter would tell a new story… However, I found myself pulling up YouTube videos to show me how to create simple, easy-to-do patterns.

– The creation of paints was a neat thing to experience. As Christian was adding the gum arabic to the pigments, I realized just how long of a process it is to get the perfect consistency of paint. Lots of effort went into creating just a small dose of product.

Today was confirmation that enormous amounts of time and effort had to be put into creating illuminated manuscripts – if you wanted them to be remarkable. It is not something anyone can pick up in a day… the mastery comes with years of practice.