Scribal practice, the Drachenwald 30 Day Challenge

[liadethornegge]

So on facebook I made a sort of throw-away comment on Meisterinne Katheryn's feed where she and Kerttu was talking about a scribal challenge, and all of a sudden when Kerttu set up a group I'm listed as one of the participants! Eep, so, I sort of had to do it then. The quote below is the formative message for the challenge:

Are you up to a challenge? Pick something you want to improve and do that for 30 days, preferably consecutively. When you start, write your challenge here. If you can take a photo of your first day effort and post it too. When you are finished with the 30 days, write a post detailing how many days it actually took, how have you improved and post a picture of the last day results if you can.

Your challenge can be anything you want: calligraphy, brocade tablet weaving, conditioning for that bear pit tourney, drawing a new but still too stiff bow... Whatever you want. But just do it.

I chose to stay with the scribal theme, as that's what Kerttu and Katheryn were going to do, and I definitely could use some regular practice. First I thought I might learn an entirely new hand, but changed my mind and decided to learn Gothic Capitals. I found a nice looking one in David Harris "Art of Illumination" on page 60 and went for that. Starting with the letter I because all straight-line letters are based on that. I always recommend starting with I.

So far I've done four consecutive days, sitting down for one hour at a time. So I've got a specified amount of time and not just endless practice. I'm updating on facebook daily, but thought I'd do it weekly here.
Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4:


Good quality paper helps. The little notebook with orange cover is the book of Pergamenata I got from Duchess Alessandra Melusine. It's a little tricky to write on, and works better when I put it on the slope as opposed to flat on the table.