My First Designed Scroll

At the recent Scriptorium and Fencing Camp, I attended with a specific goal in mind; I knew I could copy images well enough, and if I practised enough my painting and blending would be passable, but I had a hurdle to cross in the form of designing and layout.

Using a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson for inspiration, and chose this image as the inspiration for the flower border. I meant to take a picture at every step in the process, to see it all coming together, but my painting hand was faster than my picture hand, so the process isn't quite seamless.

This was also my first time using pergamenata and I quite love it. It takes the gouache so much easier than the paper I had been using. I cut down a sheet into roughly A5 size pieces, so they'd make nice frameable pieces, possibly even as gifts if they were good enough.

I drew out the image lightly in pencil then outlined in black calligraphy ink. The gold was applied as gold paint, and is also the reason all of the pictures are taken at a funny angle; I had to get the gold to show up well.

The flowers and leaves are painted in with gouache, and I'm much more pleased with the colour blending on this than on my last example. I think here the parchment I was using and that I was blending while the colours were still properly wet contributed significantly. 

One of the best parts of this project was when I stopped for lunch and looked back across at my inked design, and had a moment of not even recognising it. The next moment, it looked perfect, simply perfect. I didn't pounce my perg before I wrote my quote, something I'll remember for next time, as well as the need to practise my letters, but overall I'm very pleased with it. And most importantly, design isn't as scary now!

Confering of the Order of the Ffraid

At Flaming Arrow 7 just gone, many deserving awards were given out, and among them was one for me. This weekend, just like the last award of it's kind I saw given out, I was fished out of the kitchen to be confered to the Order of the Ffraid.  

On this piece of magnificence, the calligraphy was done by Arianhwy Wen, and the illumination by Lady Agatha of Norwich. Now, while on the confering of my AoA I was very effusive about what it meant to me, on this one there are no words coming. This one represents something so deeply personal to me that there aren't words to do my feelings on the matter justice. To quote one line from the scroll "techer, artist, servaunt, merrie maicker" - thank you all. 

But so this post isn't all serious, I'm going to tell you the story of how I almost didn't received my award, also know as how the good gentles almost didn't get their feast. Court had started and myself and Lord Arpad were toiling away in foodie preparations. A number of cheers sounded up the stairs until I heard one that I was convinced had the ring of "Huzzah for the newbies!", and that also coninciding with the point where the kitchen wants to discourage random bystanders from the cooking stress points, I closed the door. I had barely wandered back to my preparations, wishing for the sake of the nest person to come up that they had the gossip of who received what, when a massive cheer sounded, even from through the closed door. I dashed over to pull open the door.... only to have the handle come off in my hand. Even while I took out my infernal device in the vain hope that someone had likewise left theirs on during court, part of my mind was wondering how long it'd take to rig up a pulley system to get the feast out the window and into service. Of course, no one was answered (but if you have a missed call from me on the Saturday night, now you know why), but not long after Lord Duncan came up to fetch me for court. A quick rescue operation later and feast was saved and I got to almost cry in front of the populace again.

Now, a quick note to finish off. Things are about to get a bit hectic; between the Drachenwald A&S exchange that I can't talk about, and the Festival of Fools preparations for the end of this month which I choose not to talk about lest I spoil the surprise, things might get a bit quiet around here. I have a few posts ready and in reserve, in no particular chronological order, to keep things going, and then I'll be back with newer, shinier posts, where I even plan on discussing my research and thought patterns in my plans! Scary stuff!