Step Three: Lining the Pages
10 Quires = 35+ Hours
I decided for this part of the project to design my own mise-en-page but not with proportional rectangle but by modifying the secret canon method slightly as shown below. Using the secret canon method precisely, the text area of each page would be the green area plus the blue area. I am going to want more space for illuminated borders on the pages, so I reduced the space slightly and will only be using the blue box. I have shown the comparison with the above referenced manuscripts and so long as I remain consistent in my method, the text area will not be in the middle of the page, but displaced inwards and upwards.
So working with black “parchment” I did not want to have pencil marks all over my pages and have to worry if an eraser will damage the effect I have worked to get. So what I did first was make myself a “stylus” by sharpening the end of a wooden dowl.
Now, using my stylus and ruler, I scored the secret cannon on to each page of two quires (later went on to do all 10). When you look at the result in person, they are a lot easier to see than what the camera can pick up, but if you zoom in, it should be better. Here are two examples of how the result was. After this, I began to line the lay out of the mise-en-page with a silver pen. I also got a gold pen for future work on this project.
Now, going over the lines made by the stylus can be very difficult as they can be hard to see. It took a lot of focus and leaning down real close sometimes in order to see where I used my stylus to dry point all the lines from the secret canon method. (Two column examples will be shown a bit later.)
If you see a blank page, this is where I intend to put a full page illumination. This meant I had to plan out all 10 quires which I did as best as possible at this point in time, and had nine leaves at the end that are not used yet. Maybe between now and when I am finished I will think of something for them.
First, being at work is when I have the most time to work on this stuff so I have to be creative and scrounge around for materials that I can work with. For my pricking tool I was able to find a small screw driver.
As for pricking the pages, I did both half inch and quarter inch pricks and decided I preferred the quarter inch ones more. I also test where I preferred to prick them. I did a few in-text and a few on the margins, and it was the marginal method that I preferred. They are a little hard to see, but zooming in on the picture will help.
Marginal Pricking In-Text Pricking
Now I was skeptical at first of this pricking method, but it was very helpful when it came to working on this black medium. I can see when working on a light parchment, a led pencil could be easier, but with this black it was a life saver. I used my stylus to dry line the lines before using a ruler and my silver pen and after a while found that with the prick marks, it was no longer needed.
Half-Inch Quarter-Inch
And here is the result of the two column attempt, which will actually work well out for a few pages that I will be making some lists. Since I was using lines at a quarter of an inch, I decided to put the same quarter of an inch of a spacer between the columns. I found the center of the rectangle and made a mark for it with my stylus. Then it was a matter of marking an eight of an inch on either side of that and ruling through the entire text area so I knew when to stop my lining.
And here are a few more shots of two of the ten quires.
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So I had the layout of the entire book done up as a chart, but I wanted something a little less confusing. I printed up some templates of my text areas and made duplicate quires out of these paper copies. Then going through all my charts, I made a rough draft copy of the book that is color coded, has all my text prepared and other notes that I may need to know.
So now I need to add the outer lines of my illuminations and decoration areas. Illuminations are pictures that are related to the text next to it. Decoration are drawings that are not related to the text. And then there are the decorative borders on every page. I needed a way to consistently measure my borders on each page so I would find the center of each of the corner boxes and use those as my points to connect lines all with my homemade stylus.
And here you can see the end result of drawing out the illumination and decorative areas of each page.
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And to make the curved tops of the illumination pages I needed to make sure they were consistent. I did not have a compass to do so, so I had to improvise and used a jar lid.
And in the next section, I will begin doing some writing and illumination/decorative work.
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