Illuminated manuscripts commonly used a very limited color palette for their miniatures. The staples were vermilion, ultramarine, and gold leaf, but unique color palettes were favored in each separate style of illumination, varying according to time period, region, and value, which had an effect on the available pigments. I was mainly not limited in this sense, but by a desire to be historically accurate. I used as many historical pigments as possible, but made substitutions for two main reasons. First, some pigments, many vegetable-based, have been proved to be unstable over time under certain conditions. These I substituted for more stable but artificial pigments. Other pigments are now known to be highly toxic, and these I either substituted for less toxic equivalents or used with extraordinary caution.
For the Latin illumination, I chose to use egg tempera paint, a very luminous medium that was typically used for panel painting rather than book illumination, as it is somewhat softer and thicker than glair and would not hold up well under the stress of being in a book. I felt that it would not be a problem for my manuscript because even though it was made on vellum, it was intended primarily for display. As mentioned above, egg tempera has a denser texture than glair paints, due to the oil emulsion of the yolk, and takes on a light shine with time. It was therefore especially appropriate to the emphasis of the Latin manuscript. Additionally, the technique of egg tempera painting, while very simple in many places on the bar-and-ivy (involving unmixed colors), involved innumerable layers of thin glazing on the modeled portions, adding to the sense that I was building the image on the vellum.
When gilding, I chose
gesso as
size for the leaf, using a
raised gilding technique that makes the gold literally three-dimensional
on the page. While it still did not form a significant thickness, reflections
off the gold (which could be fully
burnished to a mirror shine) multiplied the appearance of depth.