I really enjoy doing scrolls in pairs, so when I got two more glove assignments hot on the heels of the last one, I went looking for a different glove and found this lovely pair in an SCA paper that I was able to track down to the Manchester Art Gallery. It’s right on the edge of being post period, but I was intrigued by everything going on in the embellishments including those tabs coming off the back of the cuffs, called fourchettes.

My normal habit is to outline first, then color in. This time, I decided to do it the other way around to see if it was easier. The verdict? Both yes, and no. Yes, I didn’t have to go back over the lines again because there was no coloring outside of them to begin with. No, because it was a lot harder for me to visualize how the end result would look when I was just painting blobs.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ve developed a habit of extending the main lines in my lettering drafting lines to make it easier to see which line I’m supposed to start writing on. It makes it so much easier to avoid spacing mistakes that can’t be taken back.

Even after all the scrolls I’ve done, I still get so excited about filling the page sometimes that I forget to leave a good amount of space for signatures and stamps. Oops.

Materials: Tablet, 8″x10″ pergamenata, ruler, Ames lettering guide, pencil, eraser, 01 micron pen, Finetec gold paint, pigment from Eva’s collection, Princeton heritage 2/0 round paint brush, Speedball Super Black ink, dip pen