Hastae Leonis- An tir

Upon the beginning of their Reign, his Royal Majesty Havordh and Her Royal Majesty Majesty, Mary Grace bid their scribes create new designs for their award charters. Later period, preferably English or some similar culture. 

I requested to design the Hastae Leonis, as this award was something dear to my significant other, it is the Award for prowess and chivalry on the field of heavy combat in An Tir, specifically for war fighters, I believe.

 

I found this lovely woodcut on a website called German History in Documents and Images

"Augsburg around 1500 (1493)

The quintessential German Renaissance city and one of Germany’s oldest, Augsburg was a rival to Nuremberg, just 75 miles to the north. During the sixteenth century, Augsburg hosted many Imperial Diets and surpassed Nuremberg as the largest German-speaking city and financial hub of the Empire. Woodcut by Michael Wohlgemut, Liber Chronicarum, 1493, pp. 91b-92a."

 

I first decided upon a layout, something a bit different than what I'd see in a while in An Tir. Although still a trusted and recommended design from a previous reigns design book. 

 

Once words were created, by Nicolai
and approved by their Majesties, it was time to fit it to the aloted space. Trial 1, didn't work very well. 

 

Trial 2 was more successful with new spacing.

 

After some contemplation of the image, I decided to vary it a bit from the original to elongate the image and make it not an exact duplicate.

 

Once I was satisfied with the image layout in pencil, it was time to ink it. 

  

Here is some up close detail of the wood cut image

And a completed, scanned clean copy with words to be provided to the Royal Scribe. 

Caidan Award of Arms

 

      

Since I've had the pleasure of knowing them, Mairghread inghean Dubhghaill and Eoghan O'Briain have loved to tell the saga of their missing AOA scrolls. Eoghan was in the armed forces for many a year, which caused their family to move around within several kingdoms, due to this and several other outstanding factors, in this year, almost 10 years after they received their announced award of Arms from their then King and Queen, we decided it was time to fix that missing document problem. 

It all began with a plea to Caid, via their kingdom scribe, explaining the issue, and asking if they would be willing to work with us to right this issue. After several months of no contact, I was able to successfully reach someone, who was more than happy to help! She indicated that in Caid, unlike An Tir, they create originals for all of their awards, and asked if we would like to have this work farmed out to one of their local scribes, or if we would like to do the design and have it approved. 

We chose to create these charters (scrolls) on our own, for the sake of personalization and expediaency. Words were provided from the Caidian kingdom scribe, and off we went! 

 

After some discussion, Jose and I decided that based on each of their persona's a design based after the Book of Kells would be fitting. And so, Jose found inspiration, and set off to work, translating it into something we could use. 

Once the design was complete, and calligraphy added, the scans were sent off to Caid to get approved by their heralds. This is another step that An Tir normally doesn't do, however in Caid, your Arms are actually emblazoned on your AOA, and therefore must be checked with the Kingdom Herald. There was one minor issue that had to be corrected for Eoghan's emblazon, and all was approved and ready to be painted!

Jose and I paired up to paint both of these, starting with the base color blocking. Then Jose painted the figures based on the coloring from the original:

Once the main pieces were painted, I took on the job of doing the redwork, which essentially is white work details done up in red. 

After the red work is completed, we added white work details on top. And now itwas basically ready for signatures and seals.

With a final review and approval, signatures were provided, and seals were mailed to me to attach. And these were presented to Eoghan and Mairghread at grand thing A.S. 50, roughly 10 years after the award was originally created. 

Final with Signatures together (the idea being they can be framed together)

 

Mairghreads version of the story: 

The story of Eoghan and my's AoA's...lol
While sojourning from our beloved AnTir, we found ourselves in Caid. We played in a couple of Baronies as the modern military moved us around, meeting wonderful people, learning new things and trying to uphold AnTirian values and standards.
In 1999, we were recognized with AoA's from Their Majesties at a lovely event Frost Dragon. Now, AnTir does things differently than pretty much anywhere else. We were given photocopied pieces of paper (one was on green paper), signed with red marker, to serve as Promisaries. Once you have your name and device passed, your name goes on a list, then you can have a scroll denoting your AoA done with seals.
As life sometimes does, life happened and we didn't work on our names or devices.
After moving back to our homeland AnTir, we rededicated ourselves to getting more appropriate names and devices and working with our wonderful Heralds. I communicated with the Caid Kingdom Scribe at that time, hoping to hear good news. Well, the wait list for scrolls was 7 (yes, seven) Years long, so they had done away with the list. If you wanted a scroll, you could commission someone to make it and get it approved, signed and sealed. That was frustrating and life demanded more attention. We pretty much put it out of our heads and chalked it up to history.
Fast forward to last weekend at Grand Thing. Friday evening, our lovely Baron Finn Grim came into our encampment and called for a Court.
Our dear Friends (two Caidian Royal Peers, two determined and sneaky wonderful Scribes and a host of wonderful people) surrounded us as Eoghan and I were called to join him.
Ana De la Sara and José Cabrera de Castilla had created amazingly beautiful scrolls for our AoA's, had them approved and (seals are in the mail).
I could not be more grateful and humbled that our dear friends had worked so hard and long on something that we had given up on. And to have my Laurel (Contessa Ilaria) and my Knight (Earl Edward) stand as representatives of Caid, made it even that much more special to me.
Thank you seems such a short sentiment for how much this act has truely touched me. My friends...my family.. Thank You!

Old Fashioned Thank You

In Dragon's Mist, we've been blessed with a very generous contributor to our SCA activities, who doesn't personally play. His Excellency Finn's grandmother has been an amazing sponsor for several years, and this past year, we decided it would be nice to send her a very special Thank You.

Finn, himself reenacts a persona from Norman 11th Century England, and so we thought that a thank for that period would be appropriate. I'd never done anything in that style, so upon discussion HE and I decided to use the most well known Norman art source, the Bayeux Tapestry as reference.

So I searched through the plates and found one that I liked on which to base my design.

I decided to use the building on the left for a framing mechanism, and add the remainder of the illustration into the entablature. Once again, I used tracing paper to begin, and flesh out the design before transferring it to the nicer paper. (Upon reflection of this project, I wish I'd taken a bit more time to make this more even on the paper).

 

Now I ink it out with a Micron pen,getting it ready to paint. 

A close up of the art and text, the text taken directly from the reference peace. 

 With the addition of the text, done by the hand of Helena.

And with the addition of color blocking: I decided to make the structure very pale, and varied like earthen structures. and the use only colors in the illustration as found in the original example.

 

I was pretty happy once the shading and white work were done.

A Heart for a Dragon

Here is Dragon's Mist, we have over 15 awards given out by the Barony for different things, some service related, some marshal related, others for Arts and Sciences of all kinds, etc.

But we are blessed with a gaggle of individuals who spend many of their waking hours working for the Barony in so many ways, we can count them. To that end, we have created an Order called:

Order of the Heart of Dragon's Mist

This is an Order for those who have served greatest. An order, or polling order is made up of individuals who are nominated by the current members to be awarded this honor by the current sitting Baron(s)/Baroness(es) of the branch. They are a fashioned after peerages, in their make-up.

One such individual, a friend of mine, was nominated to join this order, and I was happy to not just paint her charter for her, but was inspired (while rocking my son to sleep one night-- inspiration strikes in such odd ways) to make it a bit more.

This is the lovely base design and calligraphy created by Mistress Rafaella d'Allemtejo:

 

The Idea behind this design is to improvise with decoration in all of the blank space provided, here are some examples of what people have done with it: 

 

I decided that for Neamhain o'Coultaire it should be extra special. As it is the "Dragon's Heart" I wanted to incorporate a dragon in it somehow, I am not nearly as gifted as some with the drawing of animals, so I decided to use my newly found love of Italian white vine work in this instance. 

To the drawing board! 

(well tracing paper- this stuff is SO useful, I highly recommend it to any scribe!)

So step 1, I traced the shape of the arch, so I knew the exact space I had to work with. I started with the letters (DRAGON) and then incorporated the white vine work around those. I recommend pencil for this, as you have to make many adjustments with vines I've found.

You can always lay over your sketch onto a blank charter to see what it will look like once transcribed:

Once I was satisfied with my design, I used a light table to transcribe the design from my tracing paper onto the charter paper, notice there are several line overlaps, I just drew those in, and will paint in the shapes a little later down the road. 

 

Then, once design is drawn in, I used a ruler to draw equal squares down the columns, and then a .5 archival black Micron pen to draw in the lines, this provides easier to see design as well as a bit of resist for your paint later, so it doesn't run on the charter as badly.

 Now, it's time to paint! I started to lay down the gold and white paint first (this was a special charter, but still a charter, so I used Windsor Newton Gold Gouache.  This makes the letters pop really nicely.

 

Now I lay down base color blocks for the other colors, blue and red, around the gold and white. 

 

 

Now, it's time to add the accents, I decide to add in a touch of green to the columns, as well as highlight the leaves of the vines. You can also see here that the column squares have now been put through a process called "Diapering", which adds some dimension and depth to the columns.

 

Voila- the finished product, signed, sealed and eventually delivered to Neamhain, much deserving. :) 

A tale of 3 Baronies

It is true, I am a scribe.

An interesting statement to me, as many people call me this, but I'm only now starting to think of myself in this way....

I sort of stumbled into this portion of my hobby, several years ago, it was brought to me that someone was needed to do some illumination on a scroll for a baronial project, having NO experience in illumination, I agreed to try and help with this, having no idea the scope that this project would entail.

I met with an amazing lady from 3 Mountains, name Leah, who handed off this scroll to me:

It was PERFECT, penned by hand on vellum, the same text three times. Talk about intimidating. My job was to illuminate the bare portions on the left. OK.... my technical brain took over in panic and I started to break down the process into manageable pieces.

First I traced out the rough space left to me to illuminate, and confirmed that all 3 were of equal sizing. Then on a separate sheet of paper, I started to fill in the space. I decided to use an Italian white vine style, as I have a late period persona, and it looked like something I could accomplish without help. For reference, I used The Bible of Illuminated Letters, a great little resource for beginners, for sure. This is what I came up with for the space allotted.

 

 And After a bit of clean up and black lining-

 

Now that I had a satisfactory design, it was time to transcribe it onto the parchment- the scariest part so far. This was made a bit less terrifying by the use of a light table lent to me by the lovely Ignatius, our local Chatelaine. 

All of the designs penciled onto the original parchment

Now, the really scary part, painting. If I smudge even a little on one of these, it will be terrible obvious. I made a point to set this up on a large table, in a room removed of all pets and children, and all sources of moisture on a separate surface. At this point, I had to decide whether it would be better to paint each section separately, or do a one step at a time on all three.

 SO first, the letter, down goes the gold. In this case, I'd not learned to do gold leafing yet, although it certainly would have been an occasion to use some, instead, I painted on gold Windsor/Newton Guache. 

As is common in the period design, I outlined the (soon to be) white vine work with a darker blue background and outline, to make it pop away from the page. 

Then it was time to add in the other colors, from extant examples, I see that blue, red and green were most commonly found, looking back on this process, the hue of green I used, was probably too bright but it still popped from the other colors well.

 

And with the addition of red, and the base whitening of the vines and shields:

 

Once the base coats were laid out, I went through with an Archival Micron pen, and black lined in the details, and then took a TINY TINY brush and painted in the arms of each Barony (9 total shields) on all 3 portions of the scroll. the shield order rotated, with the Primary shield in the middle of the A on each.

 

 Once completed, and signed, this is what all three scrolls looked like together. 

 

Eventually this scroll was taken to a "treaty" ceremony between the Baronies of Three  Mountains, Stromgard and Dragon's Mist. There it was signed, sealed and cut into three pieces, each Barony keeping it's own version, representing a promise to support each other in event planning, new recruitment and all activities there encompassed. 

All in all, a great first experience with illumination. 

Go big or go home I guess!

In the beginning

Almost 3 years ago, I was given the privilege of taking on the roll of Baronial scribe of Dragon's Mist. At that time, we were a budding branch, with little to no awards on the books and so it was my job and challenge to not only copy charters to be painted by my local artisans, but also to create new charter designs at this time. With the help of many contributors, including Helena, José and Nicolai we worked through writing, designing and creating around 17 new award charters, these are a few of the designs that I drew -inspiration from various sources:

This is my first ever full blown charter design, inspired by 2am sleep deprivation at work, after being called in on emergency :P

Based on the prow of a viking long ship. 

 Ironically the design for this crossroad charter was gleaned ultimately from the brain of the one who would become it's premier, as it is an Order- Eoghan O'Briain.

 

This is one of my favorites designs so far, many have said they love to paint it, and I agree, below is my vision of the paint job as I drew it. Calligraphy was done by Helena.