MASTERBOARD BOOK – VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT, AND PRINTER NEWS
Some more pages for my masterboard book, this time using images from the Voynich Manuscript, but first, I was unhappy with one of my earlier pages:
This was the one with the financial documents and Payne’s grey water. It looked messy and dull and I knew I needed to add something.
Here it is with some stencilling with white acrylic paint. This is another of my own stencils, “Scallops.”
I am much happier with it now.
Back to the main subject:
What is the Voynich Manuscript?
For anyone unfamiliar with it, this is a very curious artefact. It is named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912. It is a book dating from the 15th century which contains hand-written text and many illustrations, some of which are botanical, although the plants are somewhat mythical in appearance; circular charts which resemble star charts, and numerous pictures of naked women who look as if they are bathing. The script is beautiful to look at, but it is in a language utterly unknown. Many attempts have been made to translate it, but without success, although it is said that AI has now translated it, but I have reservations about that. Its author, and its purpose, are unknown.
The book is a complete mystery, and it has intrigued people for generations. Who doesn’t love a good mystery?
For now, all I can say is that it provides some very nice images for collaging!
My first use of it in my art
Several years ago my hubby gave me a hand-made album which I filled with mixed media intuitive collage which I called my “Organic Journal” after the natural materials which comprise the cover. I made a couple of pages using scanned images from this manuscript. Here is one of them.
Four Voynich pages in my masterboard book
I had quite a few bits and pieces left over after completing the pages in my Organic Journal, which I had stored in a poly-wallet with other such wallets in my studio. I am trying to sort through these and create some more logical storage, and decided to empty this one completely, and use as much as possible of the Voynich printouts. The few remaining ones have now gone into a generic images wallet.
Page 1
This one is quite grungey, with its rust water painting and spattering. I added some diluted white acrylic paint spatters as well once everything was dry. This page is comprised almost entirely of scraps of the unique Voynich Manuscript script.
Page 2
Another page with the script. This time I used some diluted Frayed Burlap Distress Spray Stain painted on to grunge it up a bit, and added white acrylic paint spatters.
Page 3
This page received the same treatment as the previous one, and is comprised almost exclusively of images from the Manuscript.
Page 4
Same treatment again. By this time I was running out of scraps to use so I made the page with a mixture of images and text.
I love the muted shades of these pages, and the contrast between the different colours of the page fragments and the size of the text, and between the text fragments and the images. I think all four pages will make interesting additions to future projects.
Printer news
Off topic, but I’ve been having problems with my HP laserjet colour laser printer for some time now. I use this mostly for printing downloaded digital papers and bought it about three years ago. It started printing two pale parallel stripes down the right-hand side of every print. I repeatedly cleaned the toner cartridges and after replacing one or two of them as they became empty, the problem remained. In the end I resorted to professional help and the printer went to the Computer Hospital a few days ago. They are still not 100 percent sure what the problem is but the most likely scenario is that there is a damaged part inside which needs replacing. This is a very expensive part and will involve several hours of labour to install, and the part will take about 4 weeks to arrive. Not good news. They are currently doing further tests to make sure there isn’t a more satisfactory answer to the problem and will be letting me know. If it’s worst case scenario, they recommend purchasing a new printer.
I’ve never been 100 percent happy with this one because it is over-complicated and has a scanner which I rarely use. Since the problem arose, I have been editing every full-page printout of digital printables, creating a wider right-hand margin to avoid the problem. This is a lot of extra work and makes the images smaller, of course, but it has been manageable.
If they cannot repair it more easily and cheaply, I shall take it back and continue as I’ve been doing for now, as there is still quite a lot of toner in it, and I have several unused cartridges which I certainly don’t want to waste. I am already researching alternative printers and have found a Xerox one without a scanner which is a lot cheaper, and appears to do all that I want, including printing on transparencies and heavy paper and card. It has good reviews. I will be able to run it on the Windows 10 laptop in the studio which is not connected to the Internet, and also the Linux laptop in the office. It is a smaller printer and quite a few pounds lighter than the HP one which weighs an absolute ton!
