Articles by Jackie Williams
How to Create Italian White Vine
By Jackie Williams
A Brief History of Italian White Vine
The Italian white vine style and script is a product of the Humanist movement in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries. The movement began with a group of scholars and intellectuals dedicated to the study of Ancient Rome and Greece, which included the subjects of grammar, logic, rhetoric, history, and philosophy – all of which they believed were the necessary knowledge for a human to truly be free and live as individuals. They stressed the return to the source, and considered the writings of these ancient cultures to be the pinnacle of human thought. The movement became a fashion and scholars and book collectors, known as antiquenarians, began a fervent search among libraries and monasteries for original works of ancient Romans and Greeks. Ancient Latin was revived and considered to be the purest of Latin, and medieval Latin largely was considered to be barbarous and sloppy. The movement was a return to the Classical World and all things Roman became chic. The search for Roman writings turned up a tremendous number of previously lost manuscripts, though the manuscripts found were from the Carolingian period in the 8th and 9th centuries. It is unlikely that these book collectors believed that they had found original ancient manuscripts. They were, however, so impressed by the easy to read style and delighted by the vine work of the illustration so reminiscent of the vine work found on many Roman columns and shields, that they abandoned difficult Gothic script and adopted Carolingian miniscule as the accepted writing style referring to it as lettera antica, now called the Humanist hand.
References
- Christopher De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (Phaidon Press, 1997) 2nd. Ed., ISBN 0714834521
- Ingo F. Walther and Norbert Wolf, Codices Illustres (Taschen America LLC, 2001) ISBN 3822858528
- Patricia Seligman and Timothy Noad, The Illuminated Alphabet (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2002) ISBN 0806990740
Additional References
- Christopher De Hamel, The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History & Techniques, (University of Toronto Press, 2002) ISBN 0802081738
- Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (University of Toronto Press, 1988) ISBN 080204346
About Using References: A very helpful quote from the handout of Elyse Boucher
"Reference does not imply slavish imitation. It means having a visual reminder of where you're going and what it will look like when you get there. Even the very best artists always use a reference to do the final piece. This is why so many of them either have drawings from life or, in the modern era, photographs. Even da Vinci left book after book of preliminary drawings and sketches from life. These were his reference materials. References--get them, use them. The difference between a piece done with them and one done without them is plain even to the untrained eye."
Materials
Paper or parchment; Gouache Paint – colors: Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red medium (orange red), Sap Green or Viridian, White, Gold (if not using leaf); Gold Leaf and adhesive, Ruler, Pencil, Brushes, waterproof art pen (Micron Art pen is recommended) or dip pen and nibs (Brause or Mitchell recommended).
Step by Step Guide – Non-Period Materials
1. Determine the layout of your piece.
2. Lightly draw your “stationary” objects such as the letter and the bars that the vines will twine around, etc.
3. Find a starting point and lightly draw the guide line for your vines. Thinking of the natural contour of vines (or wet spaghetti on a plate), use flowing curves and circular motions, wrapping the lines around each other and your stationary object – do not use hard angles.
4. Keeping your lines light, complete the vine, maintaining a regular width throughout the vine.
5. Add your acanthus leaves, swirls, and other decorations.
6. Find your starting point and utilizing your kneaded eraser, begin to establish your vines “under/over” motion as they wind around on the object(s).
7. Using your sepia brown or black ink felt tip, or your dip pen, you can now outline your piece, outlining with a thin brown line around the edge of your vines and around the edge of the outside of your piece. Be sure to use waterproof ink.
8. Add your gold leaf or gold gouache, making sure to not add the leaf to the place where your vine crosses over the object.
9. Paint your piece, alternating the use of the cadmium red and green in the interior piece, saving the ultramarine blue largely for the exterior of the work. Blue seems most generally used in the exterior area of the vine work, although it does sometimes appear in the interior.
10. The vines remain the natural color of the paper, you do not need to paint them. If you made any mistakes in painting the background, you can touch up with white paint or try to scrape off the stray paint with the flat edge of a razor blade.
11. Choose an edge on your vine. You can now add a light brown wash to that edge throughout your piece, giving your vine depth and shading.
12. Use your white gouache to establish groupings of three small dots in the colored background of each section of your vine work. Multiple clusters may be placed in the same section if the section is large.
13. Redefine any of your inked edges, clean up any extraneous pencil marks and you’re done!
