Book of Kells Project: Inking

 

 I thought this would take forever.   But it turned out to be the most successful, glorious, satisfying part of the project.

Firstly, the ink came out a lovely black.  Many sources and people I discussed this with were dubious acorns could be a substitute for galls.   Their position, not unreasonable, was the tannins just weren't as concentrated to work.   My position was that just meant I had to boil them down more.  That is the entire reason galls were preferred, their tannins are more concentrated naturally, correct?  

Secondly, in addition to the lovely color, the ink flowed so smoothly you'd think it was manufactured.  I credit this to double straining through muslin before mixing the iron salts with the tannin liquid.   

Thirdly, in my second batch, I hit the perfect proportions of iron salts to tannin.  If it's too far one way, it's grainy; too far the other, it's more of a dark charcoal wash and needs more time to evaporate to the right consistency.  But if it's perfect, just touching the liquid will leave a dark black stain on the skin that will take a day to wash off completely.  That is ink!

Fourthly, it could handle as much detail as the quill nubs allowed.  This was such a relief for the tiny twined lion heads at the corners.  And a single dip really did go far.  If I was writing at a normal size, I could easily scribe lines long enough to finish a couple sentences at a time without pause.

All was not roses however.  There were some missteps.  For some reason I misremembered the styles used in the Book and I "corrected" some of my thin lines, making them much  thicker than I needed or wanted.  Fortunately, I only did that with one element and it looks as if I "meant to do that".  

And I narrowly avoided disaster by unwisely shaking a nub, causing a large drop of ink to fall.  Fortunately this was done on the color test sheet. 

Another annoying issue was my fumbling straight edges.  Those monks must have been kung-fu masters with straight edges.  After the second smear, I just had to stop before I made it worse and accept my "straight" lines would have a wavy appearance.

It took me less than a week to ink the traced design, which was surprising.  But gall/acorn ink  flows nicely.  It's even friendly to my extremely rusty calligraphy skills.  All in all a joy to work with.  I may never buy ink again! 

 Below is the color test sheet.  On it all pigments and inks will be tested before application.  On the right side one can see the spirals tests of various pen nubs.

 

A final note: all inking and painting was done during the morning, with natural light.