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. :)