Medieval Manuscript
- illuminated manuscript
- book of hours palette
- scriptorium colours
Lapis blue, vermilion and gold leaf laid flat on undyed vellum.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #2A2118
- #2A4B9B
- #4E7A5E
- #C1272D
- #C9A227
- #EDE3CC
What it is for
A manuscript palette is short because pigment was rare. Lapis came from one valley in Afghanistan and gold was gold, so a scribe worked with five colours and made each one count. The page reads as precious because it was.
Every colour sits flat and unmixed against pale vellum, so there is no atmosphere and no depth in it. That flatness is what separates a manuscript from every painted look that came after it.
How it works
Set the ground first. Undyed vellum is warm cream, never white, and every other colour is judged against it.
Use the four pigments unmixed: lapis blue, vermilion red, a muted copper green and gold. A colour mixed from two of them is not in the palette.
Put the gold only where the light would fall. Gold leaf was the highlight, so spreading it across the page removes the one thing that made it glow.
When to use it
Use it for anything that should look old and made by hand: a book cover, a title card, a fantasy poster, a wine label, a playing card.
Leave it alone for a photographic subject. Flat pure pigment cannot describe a real surface, and the two fight each other.
Told apart from its neighbours
Ukiyo-e indigo is also flat and unmixed, but it is built on two blues and a warm off-white with no gold in it. A manuscript is darker and richer.
A limited palette is a count with no period attached. This is a specific set of pigments, and swapping one of them for a modern colour breaks it.
Where it was used
The Book of Kells runs on about six pigments and no more, because the rest did not exist in Ireland in the year 800. The Tres Riches Heures had a duke paying for lapis, which is why its skies are the blue they are and nobody else's are.
- Book of Kells
- Tres Riches Heures
- Lindisfarne Gospels
The prompt
Run it as it stands, or drop the colour clause into a prompt you already have. It works in an image prompt and in a video prompt.
<subject>, illuminated manuscript palette of lapis blue and vermilion red on warm cream vellum, gold leaf for the highlights and one muted copper green, flat unshaded areas of pure pigment, no gradients and no modern colours
What goes wrong
The colours come back blended and shaded into a painting. Say flat unshaded areas of pure pigment with no gradients.
A modern purple or pink appears. Say the palette is lapis blue, vermilion, muted green and gold on cream only, with no other hue.
Leave out
purple, pink, gradients, shading, colours mixed from two pigments
Watch for
The pigments were costly and were never mixed. Say flat and pure, or the model blends them into mud.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
