From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V2 #30 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Thursday, May 28 1998 Volume 02 : Number 030 In this issue: [scribes]: Lecturn or Table-long Re: [scribes]: List problems & name contest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 11:12:02 +0100 (BST) From: Barbara Webb Subject: [scribes]: Lecturn or Table-long Ranthulfr - many thanks for such a thorough and interesting discussion of depictions of illuminators working flat and sloped. I hope you don't mind if I take up a few of your practical points (when I get home I'll look again at the pictures, I have the book you cite): > I look at this and I know that when he picks up his hand, that page > is going to fall into his lap. When you work with a shell color you MUST > use one hand to hold the brush and the other to hold the shell while you > dip for color. Try it. If yo are not holding the page it falls. Of course > there was no drafting tape back then, and no evidence I have ever seen of > pinning the page to the board, but in the Simon Bening picture discussed > next we will see a realistic, late period picture of a page sitting on a > steep slope and being held mysteriously. Could there be some kind of > soluble adhesive at work here? > > How many of you who paint on a slope tape your art to the board? I agree that an illuminator probably can't spare a hand to hold the paper on the desk - the way I use 'shells' (plastic lids) is the same as you describe. I don't usually tape my art to the board, although I have occasionally done so or used 'blu-tack' (the stuff that sticks pictures to walls). More often I use some form of weight or clamp, e.g. I have a piece of dowel that sits across the slope (resting on pegs) and the top of the page is held under this or I use my drafting board on the slope, which has a built in spring clamp. Other times I have built a lip at the bottom of the slope. However I wouldn't claim to have pictorial evidence to back up these methods (though someone has mentioned the use of hanging weights for which there is evidence). I wouldn't have thought some kind of mildly adhesive gum was out of the question for period? Some of these methods do allow you to sometimes tilt the paper without much difficulty, others do not... > Of > you who tape your art to the board, do you ever work small, or do you ever > have trouble with getting some curves right, or with some lines being > shakey in execution (depending on their angle?) I do work small. I don't have a major problem with curves or lines although I guess some angles are easier than others: but I tend to regard that as a challenge to improve my motor control, and it is certainly not enough difference to seem a substantial limitation to me. On the other hand I think I would find it very confusing to do shading etc. with the page at different angles, and I generally feel I can 'see' the developing image much better with it up in front of me rather than laid down flat. However these differences may depend a lot on the illumination style, and as you say what works for me may not work for you. It might be rather interesting to see if there is anything in the brush-stroke execution of the manuscripts that we could detect to see if they did paint mostly from one angle (i.e. some curves being better executed than others). Thanks for your list of 'points to take into account' when looking at pictures - I usually do keep all these things well in mind (at the moment I spend a lot of time looking at medieval representations of musical instruments, which raises many fascinating issues of how accurate we should consider the depiction: people have often concluded 'artistic license' for something that in fact turns out to be quite plausible). My original comment was made because I had seen, specifically, illuminators depicted working on clearly indicated slopes. Thanks again for your analysis which seems to show that both sloped and flat are depicted fairly often. (I hope that is a fair summary?) Sorry to have gone on so long in reply! So how do you deal with backstrain? Caitlin de Courcy http://www.provide.net/~randyaf ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 08:30:52 -0400 From: Heather Swann Subject: Re: [scribes]: List problems & name contest. John Stracke wrote: > > Heather Swann wrote: > > > I'd go for simplicity and register scascribes.com. > > scascribes.org would probably be more appropriate. > My goodness, we have so many literalists....fine, both are available for goodness' sake! :) Miri ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V2 #30 ****************************