Welcome to the Scriptorium

Welcome to my little scriptorium.

Let me set the atmosphere:
Queue up CEU Medieval Radio
- OR -
Have a look at the Pentiment Soundtrack

For the last year or so, I've taken up, or really returned to, the arts relating to the letter, color, paper, etc. That is to say: calligraphy, illuminated letters, ink, watercolor & gouache, and medieval manuscripts in general. Books I've been reading and listening to have also been in the medieval vein of late.

A big influence on this is the game Pentiment. If you haven't played this, I strongly recommend it.
I took an interest in calligraphy in high school, returned to it later for making labels and such when I got into home brewing. Pentiment renewed my interest again in calligraphy, by this time I have abandoned using marker and taken to using dip pens. I've learned a lot about pens, nibs, ink, and paper in the last while; things I definitely wasn't paying attention to ~15 years ago.

Pentiment also renewed my interest in illuminated letters and medieval manuscripts. I'd never really tried them before. I'd tried Celtic knot work in Okinawa with subpar results.
I took an art class in undergrad, Drawing and Color, and I applied that for a while to acrylic, then oil painting. The wife and I took a watercolor class during the late summer of 2020 and I dabbled in watercolor and gouache for a little while after that. And then I forgot about it for a good while. I'd been building tanks, painting minis (D&D and related) thus a lot of working with acrylic.

Then I started getting interested in making my own tiny book. A palm sized book. I found out that an abecedarium is a thing - a book, with letters, illustrated or illuminated. Most probably think of baby books, but they were a common thing in the ancient world for practice, learning, and showing off. And they could have some pretty wild, or mundane, imagery within. My idea was to create my own abecedarium, but I'd much prefer to call it a letter-hoard as that is a better Anglo-Saxon/Germanic word. I'm getting there. But it was the inspiration for my Tilde 30.6 project. That was spawned out of realizing binding a small book is going to be more work than I originally thought, and having ordered a book, Illuminated Letters Sketchbook, that it was going to take a lot more time and effort than I thought, I began working on the letters and put the tiny book on the back burner.

Projects and Products

Goosey Goosey Gander
My first foray into actual illuminated letters. I'd been practicing my calligraphy, uncial, gothic letters, experimenting in my own hand, and so I decided to try from bigger letters from my Lettering and Calligraphy Workbook in the Lombaric style.
Walnut Ink
I'd not heard of making ink from walnuts till this year. Iron-gall ink, made from iron and oak galls was a common way to make ink in the past. We have plenty of black walnut trees around here and they started falling so I started collecting. And well, now I have made ink from black walnuts and it is actually usable.
Illuminated Letters
The natural progression from the Goosey Goosey Gander was to actually do letters. So I did.
Tilde 30.6 Updates and project description
If you wanna know more about the illuminated letters project, see this
A Cormyrian Adventuring Charter
My D&D game's party was given a charter by the Lord of Evenstar. Our DM originally made the charter quickly using CopePilot. It was riddled with all kind of AI slop problems. So, I told him that I could make one. I did.

Planned Projects - Coming Soon