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. 

Good Morning and Welcome

My name is Iuliana de la Sara (or Ana for short) and I am a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA for short) in the Barony of Dragon's Mist, An Tir.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Our “Known World” consists of 19 kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes & workshops, and more.

 Society of Creative Anachronism

I belong to a household of like-minded people who love immersing themselves in all sorts of crafts surrounding this particular hobby, called The Iron Ring. This page will be a place for myself and my girlfriend, Helena Zancani to post photos and write ups of our various escapades as we explore all of the veins of this hobby.