Book of Kells: Finished, Submitted

 At long last, it's done.

But I cannot publish the finished art because of the rules of the contest. I can publish the  low resolution color test sheet, with all its mistakes and scribbles:

What I learned: those monks are metal. Even limiting myself to natural materials and the morning light, I still had the advantage of central heating and food security.  And modern conveniences.  If poor Brother Cadfael  wanted a hot cup of coffee, he had to wait for the Renaissance.  Tea wasn't much better.  Whatever hot drink...herbal tea, beer, wine...it would have been a hassle to heat it up.  There was no microwave in the scriptorum!  

While I succeeded in creating colors from all natural sources ( to which some pedant will say: "Actually, petroleum is a natural source".  Dun do bheal!), I completely failed at even coming close to a majority of the original pigments.  Historical pigments used:

Gall Ink

Indigo 

And that's it.

Now if I was to expand that to pigments documented to be used in the Middle Ages, we can add:

Iris Green

Zinc

Any lake puts us in the Renaissance.  Sticking to known medieval practices, the best I could say is 4.  But all natural sourced... that is, what a monk or medieval artist could make with the materials and technology of the time.

Here's the color sheet with source pigments labeled:

As for the contest, feicfimid.

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