7 Steps to Make Your First Medieval Scroll or Illumination

Hello everyone! Welcome to QTPieCollective. 

I am going to be going over how to make your first medieval scroll or illumination. Start to finish. All in 7 simple steps. 

I’m going to be basing a lot of this information on my knowledge coming from a historical reenacting group. But this isn’t just for reenactors. I think illuminations are a really fun way to practice your art and that the art you make can be really cool cards, announcements for a birth or wedding, or gifts for the history lovers in your life. Who doesn’t love getting a card in the mail? Plus, receiving something that was handmade is so special and fun. 

I’m going to do my best to describe everything in detail but if you need any extra explanation, please leave a comment and I’ll be happy to answer those questions. 

Step 1 – Finding Inspiration

If you already have an idea for something you want to make, you might be able to skip this step! I have always worked better when I had a visual of what I wanted to make or a reference. If you are like that as well, or if you are trying to make something historically accurate, We need to start by finding an image for inspiration or something to make a reproduction of. 

Here are some things to keep in mind while you are looking.

• Do you have a theme in mind? A specific holiday, event, or occasion.
• Are you basing it on specific wording, do you have words you want the art to accompany and compliment?
• How big of a project do you want to do? Scrolls or illuminations can come in any size!
• What kind of art do you like to recreate? Botanical, people, animals, religious… there are lots of options!
• Keep in mind your own comfort level. While pushing yourself is good, this is your first project! Find something you are comfortable with. That way you are more likely to have a good experience and want to try again!
• Decide if historical accuracy is super important to you. If it is, try to find inspirations that are documented.  If it’s not, don’t worry about it! Just find something you like. 

Places to look. 

• Pinterest is very helpful. Especially if you can find something that leads back to a museum. 
• Google can also work well. 
• Some online museums work, but I don’t use all of them equally. 
• You can use a variety of books for inspiration. I have a few different copies of historical books with illuminations in them that I look through sometimes. 

Pinterest

I searched for “medieval illumination”, “medieval illumination dragon”, “medieval illumination beastiary”, “medieval illumination botanical”, and “medieval illumination geometric”. Here are some of the results!

Google

I searched for “pre 1600 Japanese art”, “pre 1600 french pottery”, and “pre 1600 german pottery”. Here are some of the results! I’ve found that pottery can be a good place to start for finding some simple and beautiful designs.

Museums – MET and Getty

I really like poking around on the MET and the Getty museum websites for inspiration! The MET has a huge variety and Getty has one of my favorite collections to reference. I used the searches “pre 1600” and “illumination” as well as showing how you can search by time in the MET. I searched for Mira Calligraphiae in Getty to find some of my favorite botanical scroll or illuminations references.

Once you find an image you like or even a few images you like, you are ready to start!

Step 2 – Paper and Layout

Ok. Now it’s time to get our illumination set up. First things first, paper. What kind should you be using? There are a few different options and some things to avoid. Most scribes or artists in my group either use Bristol or Perg. 

Now you might be wondering if you can use a different paper for your scroll, I would not recommend using copy paper because it isn’t thick enough to handle the paint without warping badly and becoming hard to write on. You might be tempted to try using cardstock paper, but those papers can have a bad surface texture both for painting and for writing. Though it’s also said that bristol paper is a kind of card stock. It’s just made in the proper thickness and texture for the kind of art we are wanting to do. 

Therefore we recommend Bristol paper for the majority of our new scribes. It’s sturdy and doesn’t warp too badly with our paint. I use 11-14 inch paper for the majority of my scrolls.

Now it’s time to figure out how much room you want to leave for calligraphy and how much room you want for illumination. I usually try to leave 30-40% of the scroll for the calligraphy. Though you can definitely leave more. 

There are a lot of different ways to lay out a scroll. You can do it however you want or however works for the scroll you want to make. 

Alright cool! Our paper is all setup and we are ready to get sketching. 

Step 3 – Sketching in our Illumination  

I freehand in my sketch based on whatever my reference is the majority of the time. But light boxes are technically historically accurate, so if you want to go with that, you can!  If you aren’t worried about historical accuracy then you can use whatever means you wish to get the basic outline down on your paper.

I try to use light marks and judge the angles of the lines in relation to other elements to help me get the spacing and positioning correct. Then I go back and do a more detailed sketch. I erase any lines that don’t look like they are quite right and re-draw them or lines that I don’t need as I go. I draw in whatever lines I think I’ll be inking later darker, so I won’t miss them later. 

Just like with any art, this will take time. Don’t be too hard on yourself if your sketch doesn’t turn out exactly how you wanted.

After you have your sketch finished, you have to decide if you want to ink first, or if you want to paint first. Both have benefits. If you ink first, you can erase all your pencil marks and they won’t show through your paint. It makes your scroll a lot like a coloring page. It can help you keep your colors separate because as you’re painting, the black gives a really obvious boundary of where to stop. But if you want to have that little bit more freedom and not worry about painting over the lines you can paint before you ink. When I’m doing some botanical scrolls or something more realistic, it can be easier not to see the lines as much. Also, sometimes the paint gets on the lines and it can look messier. Or sometimes you need to reink things if you paint over the ink. 

I do my scrolls both ways. So do whatever you think will work best for you!

I usually ink first. So, the next step is inking!

Step 4 – Putting down Ink 

These are the things I’ll be using to ink in my sketch.  

•  I use black ink from Bombay. It has a nice little dropper to help keep things clean. 
• My nib is called a blue pumpkin and was a gift. I’ve really enjoyed using it for inking.
• My preferred pen handle. It’s nothing fancy. Just a plastic pen with a little circle for your nibs to sit in. Just push the nib into the slot. Try to hold the nib so you won’t bend its tines!

When I’m only doing a little bit of work, I like to put one drop of ink on my nib and then let that drip fall back into the well. That way I only have a small bit of ink. 

When I’m wanting to work for longer periods of time I’ll use one drop of ink. Though when you have a full drop of ink, you have to be more careful about drips. When your pen is horizontal, it doesn’t drip. But as soon as you lift the pen so the nib faces down, all the ink is likely to drip out. Even after dripping and losing ink, you can still drip if you try to draw something with the pin tip facing down. 

There are times when, if your nib isn’t very full, you can rotate your pen down slightly. But honestly, the best bet is to hold your pen so it doesn’t point down.

I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with my dip pen. But it’s taken time to get here! 

Trace over your sketch marks. This is where less is better to start with. Start with light lines and add thickness later. If you’re not sure if you are supposed to draw a line, don’t. Double-check before you trace! You want to pull your pen towards your hand. If you try to push the pen forward, the tip of the pen will dig into the paper and that’s no good. You want to try to pull your pen whenever you can. Though if you are doing light lines, you can technically push your pen forward, you just have to be careful. 

Some nibs have these slightly balled or flattened tips, like this silver nib in the pictures above.
While this might make them better for writing, I can’t say for sure because I haven’t tested it yet. All I know is that I don’t use them for lining because I feel they give me less control when doing thin lines. 

If you’ve tried one out before, let me know what you think of them down in the comments!

Silica is wonderful at sucking moisture out of the air. So throwing one in with my little box of nibs was the best I could do to keep them as dry as possible. I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, but as soon as I got my first nibs and learned rust is what will ruin them, I threw a silica packet in with my nibs and I’ve never had a problem. Now I’m not claiming that this will work forever. But I definitely think it’s extended the life of my nibs. 

When you want to see if your ink is dry. Check for any shimmering wet marks and if you’re really paranoid, like me, lightly tap over your lines in a few places and check for marks on your fingers. If your ink is dry, erase any extra pencil marks and you are good to go. Double-check yourself because pencil marks can be visible under the paint!

After you’re satisfied, Time to paint!

Step 5 – Painting your scroll

Painting is probably one of my favorite parts. It’s when your scroll really starts to come alive! You’ll want at least one container of water. Both to rinse your brush and also to help dilute and rehydrate your paints. I use two. One for rehydrating my paint and one for rinsing out my brush between colors. As for brushes, I like to go small. A lot of the scrolls you’ll make are going to have small details. And those small details can get very complicated and messy with a big brush. I’ve even heard that some scribes will use single cat whiskers for fine lines. But, to each their own! Use whatever you think will work best for you. I have all of my paints in little plastic containers. They are not airtight. But that’s ok. I want my paint to dry out. It’s a lot less messy that way!

After you have gathered your supplies. It’s time to start painting. If your paints aren’t dried out, you’ll still want to dilute them in water. I use my brush to drip water into my paint and then mix the water with the dried paint till I get the consistency that I want. We use gouache paint. Some people also pronounce it goh-sh or goo-uhsh, the proper pronounciaition is more like goo-wash. It’s water-based and a lot like watercolors. But gouache is more opaque than normal watercolors are. What that means is that you can put a layer of gouache down and it would cover the color beneath it. Opaque means its non see through, vs transparent which you can see through.

Normal watercolors are more transparent, gouache is more opaque. 

It’s also fine if you want to use whatever color you feel like first. Just keep an eye on your water to make sure it won’t dirty your light-colored paints. I like to work in layers. I try to do one layer in each area. That way I can let each color dry while working in other areas. Don’t add different colors or even second layers of the same color before the first layer is dry. It will throw things off and make things bleed… and unless you want that look, it’s really best just to try and avoid it. 

If you have your paints like me, Sometimes there’s paint all along the bottom of the container. Not leaving any room to control how much water vs paint I have. So I make a strong mix, then transfer it to the lid of the container. That way I can control the strength of the paint.

Ok. Now that we have our paint how we like it. Let’s get on to our step. Whitework!

Step 6 – Whitework 

Alright! We are too one of the last steps of making our scroll, white work.  

This is a lot of fun. 

If you are doing a recreation, follow what the original has. If you are doing something more your own, white work is added to give a highlight in some cases. In others, it’s used just to add extra texture or decoration. You can use white paint or white ink. If you use paint, you want it to be thicker than usual and you might need to do multiple coats!

I like to have my paint nice and thick. I also like to put my white onto the lid of my paint container when doing white work. That way if my brush picks up any colored paint from the scroll, it won’t get into the rest of my white. 

You can technically be done with your scroll now. White work is actually the last step for a lot of scribes. But I like to add a bit more decoration, so I will be doing one more step, embellishments! I’ll show how I like to add a bit of sparkle to my scrolls.

Step 7 – Embellishments

I am going to be using some of my favorite stuff, Metallic inks.

Make sure to shake up your inks before using them if you see that they are separated.

For other kinds of embellishments, you can get other colored inks to add colored lines over paint easier, or you can go with some kind of metal leaf. Metal leaf can get a bit pricey and it’s a bit harder to use than metallic ink, in my opinion.

Metallic ink allows you to add that same sparkle without needing to buy all the supplies for metal leaf. You can add it wherever you want to add shine. I love to add it to all sorts of things. It gives the same colored look and it will add shine when in the right kind of light. Just like getting used to using a dip-pen, using metallic inks requires a bit of practice. You can always keep some scrap paper nearby to test your nib before working on your scroll. Or, you can paint it on with a brush! Using a brush with my metallic ink is my favorite way to apply it.

One thing I have found is that if I feel my ink is too thin, it’s best to add some more before your ink dries too much. Metallic ink doesn’t really like to be gone over again after you put down the first layer unless it’s funny dry. So definitely play around on some scrap paper and get familiar with how it works before putting it on your scroll. 

After you have your embellishments finished all that’s left is to sign your name on the back!

Always remember to sign your scrolls!

Congratulations! You’ve made it through how to make your first scroll! If you follow along I’d love to see what you’ve made! Feel free to tag me on Instagram or Twitter and show off your scrolls!

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Till next time, Let’s make something!