Hand Copying the Entire Manuscript

[seridane]

I highly recommend doing it if you really want to deep dive your brain into the imagery - it's one thing to look at the images, another entirely to examine them in detail in order to redraw them. And the text as well.

Hi seridane!

I enjoyed looking at your drawings, they are beautiful, and also interesting in terms of the choices you made, not only to see it from your point of view, but it also helps me see the vms version even better. I noticed a few differences, but it's funny, some I just accept, like your nymphs are different, but somehow they just seem like they are your nymphs instead of the makers' nymphs, doing similar things. But some other differences I found enough to give a few alternate answers, if someone used your copy as the basis to answer certain questions about a vms page. Maybe those things don't matter either, it's hard to say until we know what it all is. But i very much enjoyed having something to compare, and those differences made it all the more interesting! I got both a clearer sense of what I myself think does or doesn't matter, and some about your own ideas to consider! I didn't know the plants you drew off hand, but it would be fun to figure them out and then compare again with the vms drawings. I think you should make us guess them all, like Koen did with the Herb Paris!

I would love to see more of quire 13 drawings especially!

I am more than half tempted to recreate a part of your experiment for myself, half had it in my mind to do my own transcription of quire 13 to get a better feel of it, and to compare with all the others, I wonder how yours would compare also! Maybe the differences there can move us all forward somehow too. Thanks for the recommendation, i think i am going to try. Not sure my results will be able to hold a candle to yours, though, you did a great job!

Yeah, I tried to mimic the poses and expressions and outfits of the nymphs, while drawing them in my own style. It's kind of wild the range of expressions on the nymphs in the original - some of them look serene, others looks shocked, some look genuinely distressed. 

Quire 13 and the rossette map are what I'm currently finishing up. I just added 100r and v to the folder - though I may rework those pages a bit this weekend.
Something I'm noticing while painting these pages - the way the color is applied to the plants is a little inconsistent. Sometimes just the root is painted, sometimes just the leaves. Almost never the stems. It's almost like a key to which part of the plant is being indicated? There is also an awful lot of blue being used - much more on leaves than in the rest of the book. Leaves me wondering if the color is an indication of something as well.

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I'm going to create a pdf or something of my entire document once I've got everything finished, scanned and formatted and I'm happy to share it.

Very nice!

A tip for scanning: to reduce the see-through in the image, try placing a black sheet behind the page.

The page will look darker this way, but you can  fix that in post-processing.

All the best, --stolfi

Ok, that black paper thing worked brilliantly. Wow thankyou! Rescanning everything is going to be a pain but so worth it.

[gerrydelasel]

Extraordinary work! What did you draw and color with? And on what kind of paper?

[seridane]

Extraordinary work! What did you draw and color with? And on what kind of paper?

The paper is heavy permamenata parchment paper - it's supposed to be very close in texture and appearance to real vellum (but much more affordable)
The ink is mostly Chou Kuro Platinum Ink, applied with a dip pen with two different nib types. 
The paint is watercolor and acrylic gouache. 

There are photos of the bound book on my website if you're interested: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Along with a complete materials list.

[Hasnain Raza Rajpar al-Sindi]

Hello all,
Almost a year and a half ago I registered on this site for the first time and made a hello post where I said I was going to make a copy of the entire manuscript by hand. Never posted or commented since, though I've done a lot more lurking and reading.
And I've done it! 
Almost. 
I have about 2 pages left to ink, and 20 pages plus the Rosette fold out to paint. And of course I have to bind the entire thing. I'm hoping I'll be completely done in two or three weeks.
I'm in the process of scanning and formatting the pages I've completed while I finish the last physical pages, and I think at least one person was interested in seeing it? Here's a link to a goole drive folder with a sampling of completed pages if that's you: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Let me know if there are any particular pages anyone is interested in and I'll add them.
Thanks for looking!
-michelle

Excellent

I am doing something similar from my experience in Arabic calligraphy, with Eastern materials like muqahar paper, reed qalams, etc.

[Rafal]

This is very pretty. You obviously have artistic skill, much bigger than the original Voynich artist 

You slightly reinterpreted some pictures, adding your personal touch and flavour, but I have no problem with it.

I would consider buying the physical book so please give us from time to time a report on the progress.

[JoJo_Jost]

I'd be in too... if it weren't too expensive...

[seridane]

Excellent

I am doing something similar from my experience in Arabic calligraphy, with Eastern materials like muqahar paper, reed qalams, etc.

I would love to see some of your pages when you have them finished if you'd be willing to share!

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This is very pretty. You obviously have artistic skill, much bigger than the original Voynich artist 

You slightly reinterpreted some pictures, adding your personal touch and flavour, but I have no problem with it.

I would consider buying the physical book so please give us from time to time a report on the progress.

I do have inquiries with several printers waiting for responses right now just to see what it would cost - but the foldouts are making that really difficult. 
Also the tiktok thing has me wanting to put a pause on any kind of release.

[ololololo]

Perhaps, just like you, one of the VMS scribes felt the same way. ..

This raises the question: did the scribes/artists allow their own intervention in what they were copying? Some illustrations might have been rendered incorrectly, and the overall shape of the letters themselves might even have been altered to suit the scribes’ needs.

[MarcoP]

Also the tiktok thing has me wanting to put a pause on any kind of release.

I am sorry to hear that. A beautiful work like yours is an excellent counterbalance to that unrespectful, anachronistic, hugly nonsense.

[seridane]

I am sorry to hear that. A beautiful work like yours is an excellent counterbalance to that unrespectful, anachronistic, hugly nonsense.

Unfortunately it's existence is only fueling some of the nonsense at this point. I do still want to share it, and I'm hoping by the time I can do that some of this has dies down a notch or two.