This is the design I'm using for the illuminated N.
It's from "Florid and Unusual Alphabets - 109 Complete Alphabets", Midolle, Silvestre and others, published by Dover.

This particular letter is from an alphabet by "Klimsch"This is my drawing (free hand) of the outline (on Bockingford paper)

It's cut off on the left - the paper is too big to fit in the scanner.

Next thing is to outline all of the design with fineliner (the versal is already outlined). I've put in rough shading so I could draw the various shapes.

It will end up with colouring like this


which is from "Treasures From Italy's Great Libraries" (thanks Tetchubah!) - ie using the shaded gold for the leaves/branches/flowers.

The versal will be in this colour :

as requested by the recipient. (I'll reverse engineer from "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" to mix the colour).

The work I'll be doing reminds me of a piece I did years ago - one of the first pieces that I did - the shading on the branches/trunk using black on the gold

but it used W&N gold gouache and I'm thinking of using shell gold. I'll have to see how it takes black gouache over the top for the shading.