Gold Leaf and Monkeys: Maastricht Hours (Ice Dragon Entry)

Here's another process post!
I was inspired to make this piece once I realized how small some of these prayer books actually where. I was too weary to make one so small as an award scroll so I made it as an Ice Dragon Entry.

This piece is inspired by the Maastricht Hours, which is an excellent book for grotesques, with hundreds of pages.
Where: Netherlands
When: 1st quarter of the 14th century.
Size: 9.5cm x 7cm
Materials: Parchment, ink, gold leaf & paint, most likely tempera for the colors.
Info and Images digitized at the British Library and available here. In the middle of the page is a picture of a blank page with the words '581 images available' next to it, click the image to begin viewing.

My rendition:
Size: 9.5cm x 7cm
Materials: Parchment, ink, gold leaf & paint, and guache.

I had bought a tiny piece of parchment from Pergamena, and had to cut it down even a bit more!

I penned in the text area with a light sepia. That's right, PENNED. The lines are always still left in the prayer books. Penciling in and erasing the lines when we are done is mostly a modern aesthetic. I used the same number of lines and same dimensions for the text space as the original.

This is one of my first attempts at calligraphy. I felt I needed it for the piece to look complete. I don't know latin so I incorporated an english quote, so it would make sense to me. I also did not cut words at the margins. For how small it is and how new I was to all of this, I think it's pretty good :)

Then I added the rubrication. Yup, red inked words were also called rubrication. They were inputted into books as side notes of a sort. They also shortened words with common abbreviations. I made up some of my own.

Then I illuminated the smaller capitals. They were painted in with gold shell (paint) and blue paint. After painting in the letter, I added the rubrication around them (this time I'm talking about the pen flourishes) in red and blue ink.

I sketched in what would become the illumination. Different pieces are compiled from elements on different pages of the original, and some of it is just made up. The best part of this not being an award scroll is that I didn't need blank borders all the way around.

These are the three pages that I took most of the shapes and grotesques from. f69v, f85r, f92v, if you want to view them bigger online.

This is the point when I decided to try using actual gold leaf instead of just filling in with shell gold. Technically this should be done much earlier in the process, because the gold may stick to inked and painted areas where you don't intend it to go. But I figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

At this point I realized I wouldn't be able to get the gold as smooth as I wanted. I was having trouble with the gold not staying on while I was burnishing it. It was super thin, as you can imagine. I tried all sorts of stuff to get it to stick, including garlic juice. Yes, this piece smells like garlic, and so did I for a while after that! (It didn't work) I now have thicker gold leaf and proper gesso to work with thanks to my Laurel, Sir Aengus and his wife, Mistress Yvianne. So there will be another shot at gold leaf in my future. Below is what I had hoped to do on the gold leaf, get it smooth enough to stamp a pattern into it: