Hi!
I'm not a professional calligrapher. I'm a semi-skilled amateur with decades of off-and-on practice behind me. But I was just handed the most amazing project, and with one small exception, it's perfectly suited to my skills and abilities. It's a book inscription--but the book is a massive leatherbound tome with a tooled cover, inset stones, pivoting latches down the side...oohhhh, it's so beautiful.....and the inscription is a poem that's Wiccan in tone and spellbook-themed, so perfectly elegant copperplate would be out of place and my half-elegant efforts will be perfect!
Anyway, here's the problem. The book is bound in multiple signatures and is over 1.5" thick. The paper is fairly thick and slightly toothy and so soft I honestly thought it wouldn't take ink well, but the client had an extra sheet for me to test on, and the ink laid down without feathering or starring, with nice hairlines even. However...I can't figure out how to manage the guidelines. I'm almost certain that putting my lightboard inside the book and under the page I need to work on will be a bad idea--I'm super nervous of damaging this gorgeous volume. But I tested my finest eraser on the same sample page I tested the ink on, and while erasing doesn't create a visible roughed-up area, it does pull fibers from this soft paper.
How would you handle something like this? Any tested methods, best practices, or crazy ideas?
Thx