The Sinister Scribe

A brief explanation of pouncing… a period technique used to copy images. A blank sheet of vellum would have been placed under the illumination. Then holes were carefully poked along the outlines of the image content. The vellum under the illumination became the template for making another “copy.”

First Picture: Not wanting to “waste” a sheet of perga, I pounced directly onto the printout. Then used powdered graphite (leftover from college mumbledymum years ago) to gently rub over all those little holes. The sheet to the right of the printout shows the results after gently blowing away the excess.

Second Picture:On the perga now… This time I decided to try not rubbing down because I didn’t want to cause too much smudging. This picture shows what I saw BEFORE blowing away the excess. I would show you what it looked like after blowing it away, but a blank sheet is purty boring. Doh!

Third Picture: Second try, same piece of perga. Success! So I believe a bit of rubbing is necessary to get a successful transfer.

You can see around the horse and rider it is pretty clear (dots close together) but around the tiger it is not so clear. I started thinking that the period pounce holes were not so close (not to mention that my hand was getting tired) so I spaced them apart more. I don’t know if it is the spacing or just that there is more stuff in that corner. I think it is enough however to continue with connecting the dots.

Afterthought: the tiny holes really worked better than I expected. I am tempted to redo it with tiny holes all around and the perga template. *sigh* My hand wants to cramp just thinking about it.
Stay Tuned!