wyntersea

Scrolls given out in court this weekend. Pernell and Jahnkin's scrolls were done in a Gothic style for the second age (1250-1450) of Arontius and Laurellen, Baron and Baroness of Dragon's Laire. Conall's scroll was for an award given originally in the First Age (pre-1250). The colors are a little off and there are problems with shadows (thanks Marcus for helping me figure out how to get the telephoto extension off the camera:-]), but the gist of the scrolls are there. All scrolls were inspired by manuscripts found in the British Library http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/searchsimple.asp (try "puzzle initial" in the keyword search for Jahnkin's). Some of the designs may show back up in charters for the Barony:-]


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	Pernell Camber's Dragon Flame scroll Given in the second age of Arontius and Laurellen the scroll was based on an English Gothic manuscript found in the British Library.
	Close up of capital P I combined the designs from two different manuscript pages to get the Dragons that I liked for both the interior of the P and the decoration at the bottom, done with raised gilding. I'm thinking there must be a "perfect" temperature range for applying the gesso, because this had more of a mirror finish then the last time I applied gilding.

New Year's Eve I received an e-mail wondering if I would take on a Court Barony scroll for the following weekend. Wasn't sure about taking it as I had guests through Monday and wasn't going to 12th Night myself which meant it needed to be finished in time to get a ride there with someone else (Thanks Mir!:-) instead of me pulling scribal purgatory duty at the event and working through the night to make sure it was completed.

I decided to take the assignment (I knew enough about the recipient's time frame to pick something applicable and when I hadn't seen Black Lion on Facebook for the first 24 hours decided to forgoe the optional heraldry) and was able to do a little research on the scroll and come up with a text, but didn't get to calligraphing it until Sunday or Monday afternoon and had enough mistakes then (usually do this step in a very quiet no conversation environment) that I decided to work on the design layout until guests had left. Also decided that instead of going 200% (which fit one of my Rotring pen sizes perfectly), to go closer to about 150% which saved me bunches of area that didn't have to be gessoed or painted or white worked or re-lined (all the black lines are applied with a paint brush) and fit on an Arches 12 X 16" watercolor block.-].

After some very late nights and very early mornings and some woke-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night sleeps it got finished... sort of... I know there are mistakes on it, but instead of having the time to fully square up the mistakes as they happened (which I get at my normal pace) it was out of the door before I even got the chance to wish that it would just go away (as many of my scrolls do) because I can see all of the mistakes very clearly and have lived with them far too long:-s

It is done in the style of the Macclesfield Psalter, 16 lines per page, done to the ratio of page layout in the manuscript, though the foliage in the upper left corner of the recto (right side) page does go past the midway mark of the bifolio. I'm working on the colors - I like the Macclesfield because of the variety of large area colors that it uses almost in a patchwork pattern with the gilding, Ultramarine and Azure blues, Minium (orangish red), a purple (whelk or probably a foliage derivative), a washed Burgandy red (that I didn't quite get right), a washed out light red that may be a fugitive madder lake and didn't attempt and probably a sap green made from ripe buckthorn berries and a yellow maybe made from unripe buckthorn berries

So after having gotten this baby out the door and on its way we will file it under the "Been there, done that, am not going back again" tab:-]


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	Bifolio layout Court Barony scroll for Gwenllyen Potter based on the Macclesfield Psalter which uses a variety of colors not normally found prominently at this period (purple and a maroon red that I didn't quite get right). Decoration motif's include ewers with a red background (part of her heraldry) and a female figure with a court barony coronet.

This year I created a card design based on the illumination style of the Luttrell Psalter. http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/medieval/zoom.php?id=497

It was interesting figuring out envelope styles/sizes (the design was made to fit inside a No. 10 size envelope) and then figuring out how to make them postal worthy without the humidity in the air causing them to bleed paint inside the envelope. In the past I've used Blair odorless workable fixative which I'm not sure is made any more. I was left with Krylon workable matte fixative, which was a little more shiny than I would want:-s.

The design included a back of the card deesign featuring the Wyvern I did for the January Dragon's Flame with a spray of holly above it. I used Holbein Gouache for all the colors except the Winsor and Newton Sap Green.

	Christmas card design Reindeer Drollery before I figured out the ermine:-]
	Christmas Card Drollery Inspired by the Luttrell Psalter - with ermine:-]

Card Design for Scribal Guild Yule contest For the Yule contest I gave out blank cards for people to create a design for (small area of design, no calligraphy) to possibly be reproduced at a later time. This is my design inspired by the Taymouth Hours manuscript. and includes raised gilding.

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8148&CollID=58&NStart=13

Robert Drollery "Pilgrim" because of his travels, mace because he has been a marshall, fleams because he is a Master chirurgeon, "rubber chicken" because he is a WOAW (puns excessibly:-). Plus the tail end of the chichen-hearted hen.

Just finished and delivered the Pelican scroll for Robert Trinitie the Chicken hearted this weekend at Crown Council.

I took the assignment because I was so pleased that Robert had finally been caught:-]

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	Robert Trinitie the Chickenhearted Portrait Pilgrim's hat with Calontir badge - Robert has lived part of his SCA life in Calontir
	Bifolio Layout Facsimile size (with a little bit of framing margin around the outside)
	Bas-de-page left hand side Robert as a man of all seasons/services:-]
	Bas-de-page right hadn side Robert(s) serving head table. From left to right - Countess Elizabeth (former patron of Wyewood) Count Cire (former Patron of Wyewood), HRM Dagmaer, HRM Thorin, HRH Ieuan, HRH Gwyneth, Anthony Black Lion based at least in the center on the seating in the Luttrell Psalter with wife on the right, heirs on the left. Black Lion's signature.
	Bubba close up Wyewood's bat-winged hamster, plus close up of some of the penwork around the capitals.
	Pelican Piety This was a little difficult since the exemplar bird for the Pelican was multi-colored and I needed to find variety on a white background. Robert was a little hesitant at becoming a Pelican so the bird to the right is a little reflective of this,-]
	Chicken hearted Rooster

I'm in the process of working on a Pelican scroll due November 12th (this Saturday). I'm experimenting with photographing it in the same view so that I can do one of those morphing slideshows (I'm hopefully going to be talking to Marcus about some issues with lighting before I try this the next time though). Here is a very small pre-view of the piece, others are available in the Scrapbook section of my account, but they don't show the finished design. (I'm trying to keep it a secret until the day of:-})

I'm doing it in the style of the Luttrell Psalter to scale [with a little bit more margin:-] and trying to stay faithful to the coloring scheme, but there is that elusive red (I think they usually call it a madder lake) that would make it look more Luttrell Psaltery:-z. I can see some vegetation experimentation in my future - buckthorn and madder.

Surprises - this is a LARGE text (though it would probably make those with Speedball C3's feel happy), and mixed large, medium, small scale design (though luckily not smallest) some done with a black ink outline, some without, especially where the buckthorn yellow is used. It looks like they added white paint for the eyes (the new eyeglass prescription has been very useful:-]). Once again, the style format for large capital pages affected my plans for the layout, but will explain how in the next posting.

Most of the base painting has been completed and a little of the secondary coats. The gilding is done with a fish glue gesso (need to make me another batch even if it takes forever to dry out after mixing) with embossing patterns in the gilding - I'm pretty pleased and want to see it by candlelight:-]

Check back in about a week...

Robert Trinitie's Heraldry Linework of heraldry for Robert Trinitie the Chicken-hearted's Pelican scroll

I've had suggestions to change to a lighter theme (and dark text:-]) I've got an unpaid subscription so these are a little limited (eventually will get to a paid subscription, just one of those things on the list:-s).

It feels a little bare for the moment so I may be trying on some more browser themes or better yet taking the plunge and paying for the subscription and broader choices:-]

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	Alaricus Dragons Flame Scroll Inspired by this manuscript page in the British Library: http://www.british-library.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=20222 I'm really liking this style (mostly unpainted, depending more on the linework for the design) of illumination and like this the best of the two Dragon Flame scrolls I did for Last Chance. I used purple for the recipient's name as this seemed to be a favorite color of his based on his heraldry:-}
	Talon's Dragon's Flame scroll completed Look behind the cut for details.

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Ciaracan Na Traga Chivalry scroll Stylized Roman ivory triptych (for Britannia persona) with silver Uncial calligraphy - text in Latin using the Caid chivalry text as the basis, gilded Roman knight's chain done on black Rising Stonehenge paper. I had previously made an “ivory” Frank’s casket design using a monotone color that didn’t contrast very well on white paper and wanted to see if colored paper would punch up the design a bit. Using black was sort of interesting since most of my linework and calligraphy set up are usually done using black pencil or pen. The calligraphy and major layout lines were made by incising the paper using a bone folder and then switching the light source around so I could see the lines as I was working with them. Designs were transferred using a "white" graphite paper. I considered doing the calligraphy in gold, but between the shades of yellow ochre paint and the gilded knight’s chain I felt there was too much yellow happening in the design and so chose silver as a contrast hoping to avoid too much color variation (looking for simple). Discovered that black is far less forgiving than white as far as showing areas where the opacity of the paint was a little thin:-x - but at least I've worked out the tools and materials needed to work on black:-}