Recreating the Catalan Map Panels 5 & 6

Comparing the New Panel to the Other Pages

I occasionally flip back and forth between this image and the original so that I can see how all the pieces are lining up.

Off to a Great Start: Now to Scrape it Off

I thought I was doing so good by laying all my inking lines down so well.

And then I took a step back, looked at the extant again and realized that all the shorelines looked like big, fluffy clouds.

So I decided to scrape off the ink lines and redo them as fluffy clouds.

ASMR of me scraping my scroll.

Addressing Laurel Commentary: "You should do the inking with a map making quill instead of a glass pen."

First, I didn't know that was an actual thing. My bad.

So to honor that request, I did this entire section of the map with what is considered a 'map making quill.'

So I went on a hunt to find a nib

I found this wonderful tutorial by Jet Pens on how to pick and choose pen nibs to reflect a specific art style.

So off I went at 8PM on a Sunday night, accompanied by my children and my art school graduate sister to Michaels to see if they had anything like it. I ended up purchasing the "mapping nib" by Jet Pens, then used it to draw the rest of the scroll.

I picked this nib because it's rather forgiving of how much pressure I put on it with my dip pen.

Champ

The Indigenous people that have long lived and hunted near Lake Champlain, the Abenaki and the Iroquois, have their own legends about a large creature inhabiting the lake, which looked like a large, horned serpent or giant snake. The Abenaki term for this creature is Gitaskog.

Placeholder

Hanging out in Albany

Albany, NY was founded in 1614 by the Dutch settlers and named Fort Nassau.

I swapped back to my glass pen from my mapmaking quill.

Added More Cities

I added in the cities of Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA.

Springfield, MA was the earliest settlement in MA, and it was known as Springfield in 1636.

Hartford, CT was originally known as Fort Good Hope in 1614, but eventually changed the name to Hartford in 1640.

I'm still on the fence of how to do the calligraphy for these places. I'll add more information in when I have some clarity on what to do.

The issue that I have at this stage was attempting to answer a question posed to me that asked: "why are you using modern names instead of the period names versus the SCA names?"

Discourse on Glass Pen Versus Sketching Nib Versus Raven Quill

This is more of an aside I wanted to discuss in this piece because I've had to switch between these three instruments. It was suggested to me by a Laurel to use period map-making instruments, like mapmaking pens or the raven quill.

Glass pens are considered out of period because they came about in 1670 in Italy. (Read about it here.)

I was successful, for a time.

Then my ink kept clogging in the map-making pen and in the quill. Soon, I found that I was losing a lot of time and focus because I had to keep stopping every 10 minutes to take my pen to remove the dried ink. The clogging happened for a couple of reasons:

I'm using a fine nib point
I'm using a modern, India ink that is thicker than period inks

So, I had a couple of solutions:

Use a bigger nib
1. Not an option because I need the fine line
Use a wetter ink so it flows better
1. I played with this solution a bit, but overall it only delayed the clogging time by a few minutes, which is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
2. Adding extra water also makes the ink dry more slowly, which is an issue right now for me because it's hurricane season and the humidity is high here. I need to add an extra five minutes to wait for the ink to dry versus the less than two minutes I wait for my regular ink to fully dry.
Change the ink to another variety
1. I played around with this option and tried other inks, like Higgins, Amsterdam and Bombay plus 4 other varieties of fountain pen ink that I already have on hand. The ink that gave me the "flow" that I wanted was a fountain pen ink that works well in my modern fountain pen. I chose against this option because this ink lacked the opacity that I liked, and it was not waterproof.
Use a period ink
1. Period inks would be best for this project, but they lack specific qualities that I like for scribal projects. These qualities being lightfastness, archival, permanent, waterproofness, and opacity.

Lastly, the recipient himself raised a concern about ink. He was worried because the intended location of where this scroll would eventually hang was in a place in his home with a lot of windows and light. Not using lightfast ink would cause the ink to break down a lot sooner.

Added in their Majesties

Added a bit more color

The "Final Piece"

I call this the "final" piece because this was the furthest I could get on this part of the scroll with the time constraints that I had to work with. I was going to add some text in that box on top, but the text never got to me on time.

Side by Side with all the other panels

Looking at it now that I'm finished with this project, I realize that I forgot to paint in the other half of Lake Ontario. I also had some more cryptids panned, but it never got drawn in.

Departure from Period Practice

This scroll has a combination of modern names and period names.
- This particular page will have the names of places in period based off of resources and maps from 1510-1650 with a majority of places documented around 1614
- The mundane names of some places remain where they are because they're significant locations to the recipient
Use of a glass pen and a metal sketching nib
- I started out on this project using my map-making nib because it was suggested to me by a Laurel. It was effective for a while when I was actively sketching my piece, but the moment my ink dried it became a challenge

Things I Learned

I just realized on my new high def photos that all the water ways were outlined with a thin line of black ink around the blue squiggles.
- This means I got to go back to the other pages and redo the water

Beware... Beyond This Point is a Black Hole of Information I Collected While Researching This Scroll

This is a forbidden place filled with all the things that kept my ADHD brain up in the middle of the night because I ABSOLUTELY needed to know.

New York - Manhattan circa 1660

The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown. He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême). A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River').

Some time in 1614, the Dutch claimed lower Manhattan and called it "Niew Amsterdam."

Nieuw Nederland 1614-1674

Lots to unpack here, including a long collection of names from period with some that are slightly out of period.