Nonpareil Scroll White Vine How To

Add some little thingamabobs to the ends of the vines. 

Add a couple of little "dead end" branches to the vines here and there, also with thingamabobs on them.

Add more thingamabobs and little branches here and there. Remember that the thingamabobs that you add should generally touch the vines they are reaching towards when possible to enclose spaces. This gives you enclosed spaces to add your colors to later. 

Fill out the full of the vines with plenty of thingamabobs, still being sure to create enclosed spaces. 

Add a few lines and decorations on the vines themselves here and there.

Create the "over and under" pattern of the vines by erasing key lines. Remember that the pattern should be over-under-over-under as much as possible; alternating and not having a single vine go under or over twice in a row. I personally like to attack this from top to bottom and then left to right.

It doesn't matter if you start with over or under, so long as you are alternating them.

Pencil in an outline around the whole of the vines. I would like to say that I use "0.025 inches" or something, but in reality I just eye-ball it. It needs to have a thin margin, but not too thin. 

Remember that this area will be filled with blue. You don't want too much or too little.

Go over your vines, thingamabobs, and outline with a waterproof ink of your choice (I use black micron pens). Then erase all of your pencil lines. Now you are ready to paint!

I always add the blue first.

What color blue? Glad you asked!

I use a custom mixture for all of my white vine base colors. These mixtures are detailed in a book called The Bible of Illuminated Letters by Margaret Morgan. I will detail each mixture in this how to.

For blue: ultramarine + winsor blue + zinc white

If you guild with gold, you might have already added gold to the initial and various enclosed areas. But I use a 24kt gold watercolor, so I can add it at any time. 

I decided to add the gold to the letter and a few enclosed spaces around the letter simply so I could plan which other enclosures the other colors could go in. The colors should not "touch" each other or be right next to each other whenever possible, so the gold enclosures couldn't touch the gold letter.

This will make more sense as we go.

Paint in various enclosed spaces with red. Try not to let the spaces touch each other, but understand that in some places you may not have a choice. Keep in mind that you will be filling in other enclosed spaces with green and gold.

For red: scarlet lake + zinc white + a little alizarin crimson

Paint in various enclosed spaces with green. Once again, try not to let the spaces touch each other. You should still leave some empty spaces to add gold.

For green: oxide of chromium + lemon yellow + zinc white

Fill any remaining blank spaces with gold. This looks like a Christmas disaster right now! It's okay. Trust the process.

Using a brown paint wash (dilute a with a lot of water to get a very thin, transparent color), add shading to all the vines. As a tip for shading, pretend there is a sun in the upper right corner of your paper. The opposite side of the vines and thingamabobs is where the shading should go.

For brown: vandyke brown + a little ivory black

Once your vine shading has dried, you should outline them again. Use a thicker mixture of the same brown (or switch to black if you prefer) to outline your vines and some of the thingamabob details. If you prefer, you can use a micron pen to outline instead. 

Use white to add random dots all over the filled spaces. I prefer bleed-proof white ink, as it is opaque and doesn't let the colors underneath bleed through. However, zinc white is also acceptable. 

The dots should be in groups of three. 

Dots can be in the blue outline area around the illuminated letter itself (this blue area is generally larger), but NOT in the blue area around the vines themselves.

Now it looks better! It looks complete! You are done!