Backlog Silver Wheel

Osanna painted a backlog scroll that was based off a late period Italian white vine page, I was asked to do the calligraphy.

Looking at the exemplar I decided the hand was Humanistic. But then I noticed the s's were all the long s. Even the double s, and the last letter of a word s. Which, after looking up the "rules" for long s, was wrong. And the g's were drawn differently.

So I confirmed what I saw with Vettorio and just did it how they did it on that page. *shrug* I saw the e's were also slightly different, the middle line was higher up. But I couldn't figure out exactly what was different about those e's from what is in my calligraphy book, so I didn't worry about that. 

I was given words for this scroll, but I don't know if I would ever put "honorable lady" in the text if I was the wordsmith. Yes, I did look up her OP and saw she has a GoA. just to make sure it wasn't stepping on any toes to include that. But I didn't want to tweak the wordsmith's words too much, so I left that in.

I've sent that off to the backlog deputy, and I've cleared out my list of backlogs I'm working on. I've nudged a few illuminator friends to make blanks for me by the end of the year, so I can pick up a few more backlogs or hold them for live assignments for the next reign.

Backlog AoA

I was handed a beautiful backlog illumination for Grainne inghean ui Neill, painted by Fiona the Volatile. She said it was based off the Lindesfarne Gospel. So I googled around a bit and found a blog from a writer who was doing research on that for a book she's writing. She had a few photos, including one page with writing.

So, comparing this page with the ones in my calligraphy books I decided it was insular majuscule, and got to work with the words I was given.

This hand was a bit harder, as the nib was to be flat horizontal. So I ended up rotating the lap desk I work on while also twisting my arm into a position that was not really comfortable. For the t's and g's there's a little extra bit on the leading edge of the top line, I left it out at first, as it would require turning the nib basically 180°. Then I went back in after the rest was done and added those in to get the correct look. 

As much as it physically pained me to do this hand, I am really quite happy with how it turned out.