Category Archives: Illumination

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Sorcha de Barry’s AoA (May 2013)

Sorcha's AoA

Award of Arms for Sorcha de Barry

This assignment actually had an excuse to be finished just under the wire, since it began life as a completely different award for a completely different person. We took that in stride, though, and put the other info aside like we’d never heard of it. Hm? What other assignment?

Since the recipient for this was being recognized for lots of work, especially with children’s activities, I sought as a source something featuring either a) children or children’s activities, or b) something which could easilly be altered to show children’s activities. Eventually, I wandered past the teeny tiny book of hours which I’d included in my figure class last year as an example of grisaille, and realized that Jean Pucelle had included scads of street life in his marginalia for that book! Bingo! The corners of nearly all the pages in that book feature lovely little people doing anything and everything one could see in Paris in the mid-fourteenth century – begging, kinging, waterbearing, thieving, what have you – so it was a good candidate for this project. As it turned out, one of the pages of which I found good photos was very nearly useful as it was, so I ended up needing to do little fabrication, just a little cosmetic surgery here and there. Continue reading →

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Davius’ Golden Rapier scroll (March 2013)

Davius Saincte-Jacques' Golden Rapier Scroll.

Last year, I worded Davius Saincte-Jacques’ Silver Rapier scroll, with the actual scroll handled by Mistress Nataliia. Since the source I found then was so useful for the OSR, I went back to it when Annys and I received the commission his Golden Rapier scroll. I found what I was looking for in a much earlier letter than the last time, this letter being from Edward IV, rather than Elizabeth I. As it had the feel I was looking for, I fudged the date-accuracy a skosh and ran with it. This text contains most of what I love about good scrolls: it’s overly wordy, contains wonderful spelling, and allowed me to insert several in-jokes tailored to the gentle receiving it.

Text and process images after the jump. Continue reading →

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June 2012 Pikestaff cover (April 2012)

pikestaff cover June 2012

I'm so sad - I'm a *March* cover artist! Actually... June works, too.

If you’re a paid SCA member of the East Kingdom, you may have already seen this somewhere. 🙂

This design sprang from my research for my the 14th century figure drawing class I intend to teach at Known World Heraldic and Scribal Symposium in June. I’ve been looking at examples of illumination and marginalia from the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries to break down the styles by basic era, and found that the style I use to draw people is pretty close to the style seen in the later 1300s, but that this style doesn’t go as far towards the 13th c. as I thought. However, I have recently found several examples of the style I was first exposed to as “14th century” art, for example, the Vienna Bohun psalter, in addition to the wonderful example of grisielle (gray work) found in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux.

Pages from the Hours of Jeanne D'Evreaux

This is grisieile, or gray-work, and it's a fantastic example of it.

Folio 85v of the Vienna Bohun Psalter

Folio 85v of the Vienna Bohun Psalter, Moses speaking to the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea

For this cover, I finally decided to work from the Vienna Bohun psalter folio 85, which features a scene of the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea within an enormous illuminated capital. More than this, the people in this image look just like the people I usually draw, the kind of figures my hypothesis was built around. A few leaps of creative logic later, I had the pencil sketch for the cover roughed out, using the capital “P” of Pikestaff as my centerpiece. Sketches and the rest of the process follow the jump.

Continue reading →

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Mudthaw Youth Combat Tourney Scroll (March 2012)

Mudthaw Youth Combat Tourney Scroll

This scroll is an example of “the simple ones take the longest”. We had some trouble getting it started, because we had a completely open-ended assignment of “something for the Youth Combat tourney”, and it was not interested in telling us itself what it wanted to be. Even the text went through four of five mutations before settling on the simple, but not completely same-old, same-old form with which we ended up.

In the end, we went with my fall-back position of 14th century stylings, with a later gothic hand with which Annys has been working since the Yule A&S scroll. Again, both artist and writer will happily point out at length the errors and sub-standard bits, but also again, I think most people will argue with us. 🙂

When I can find which manuscript it is which contains the illumination from which I worked, I’ll post it here. For now, I’ll say that the trees are very much in line with the exemplar, enough to make someone who looks at manuscripts all the time say they looked like 14th century trees, and that makes me unreasonably happy.

Hidden: some process-ish shots, in the style of “more”. Continue reading →

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Emeline Patterson’s Seamstress to the Crown scroll

Emeline's Seamstress to the Crown scroll.

 

This marks our first official foray into kingdom-assigned scrolls, and I think we did OK. I can tell where all the glaring (to me) errors in the illumination are, and Annys can tell you where all the egregious and obvious (to her) calligraphy mistakes are. I don’t know as anyone else would notice, though. With luck we’ll be asked to do another. 🙂

So, on to the specs – in this case, I knew the recipient, and had some channels to double check what I knew of her persona (or, in this case, new persona). Since Emeline has moved from “some sort of piratey English” persona to some form of Viking, I began looking to Viking eddas and other sources for inspiration. I eventually found said inspiration in the doorposts of the Hylestad Stave Church in Norway, famous for the elaborate carvings representing the Lay of Sigurd.

The carvings gave me a great jumping off point, and as I thought about it, it seemed more and more appropriate since Emeline is known to work in wood a fair bit – I have a tourney prize from some years back which made. The particular image I worked from is one of Sigurd and Regin forging Sigurd’s sword Gram. The final piece is a bit of an abstraction, as it’s an ink rendering of a carved wood relief, but I think is does a fine job of evoking the feel of the original. (I elected to forgo drawing the wood grain.)

To go with it, we looked for a later-period hand that might have gone with a Scandinavian stave church, settling on artificial uncial. Our differing pronuncitions of “uncial” inspired the following exchange:

Me: “Artifi-shul un-shul.”
Annys: “Un-see-al.”
Me: “Um… then it should be artifi-see-al un-see-al.”

We wrote the text based on the Thorpe translation of “The Lay of Sigrdrifa”, from The Edda of Saemund the Learned. The meter is pretty close to the translation, but that’s a bit of a fudge since most translations don’t really do justice to their originals. All the same, we came up with a fun little bit of edda-like verse to explain what award it was, to whom it was given, why it was given out, and by which royals.

Who has Our corslet made?
Stitches fine of golden thread:
Who hast regal draped
This King of East?

Emeline Patterson
Has by her hand
attired Us
for Birka day.

Thus do We
Gregor three and Kiena
Make her Seamstress to the Crown
In Our Settmour Swamp
At the Thawing of the Mud
A.S. forty six.

Process images after the jump.

Continue reading →

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Yule Menu Scroll (2011)

This is the third year Annys and I have contributed a menu for the baronial Yule feast, even though this time Alesone wasn’t cooking it.

This year represents the 40th anniversary of the official founding of the Barony of Bhakail, so we wanted the menu to reflect that. I did several sketches, but it wasn’t until Bruni pointed me towards several images of a critter known as the eastern tiger salamander that I found my real inspiration. The connection between the breed of salamander and the Eastern tyger, the populace badge of the East, was too good to ignore! That’s how this menu came to feature an image of Flambeau (he’s so glossy) the eastern tiger salamander cavorting in flames (the medieval idea of where salamanders were happiest).

The idea of the shield representing the baronial heritage presented itself rather naturally. Using many resources available to me (the internets, the EK wiki, and the memories of several long-time Bhakailis), I sorted out the order of march of the Barons, Baronesses, and vicars throughout the barony’s history, and tracked down the emblazons of each. I expected some issues in completeness here or there, but I think we did a pretty good job of covering all the bases. We even managed to include my signature inclusion, a hidden flamingo, as well as a nod to the probably-aprocryphal tale of the first founding of the barony, a bear named Robert. According to Her Majesty Kiena, I also included a bunny rabbit. His Majesty Gregor isn’t so sure, though.

The menu was offered to Their Majesties as a gift, and they snatched it right up. (Much to the chagrin of Annys, as this was the first one she really wanted to keep – with good reason. It’s really awesome.)

As far as the calligraphy goes, Annys knocked this one straight the heck out of the park. I am totally thankful to have her to make my paintings into real scrolls. 🙂

Red pencil, gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink on pergamenata, roughly 10.5″ x 7″

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Champion of Arts & Sciences scroll, December 2011

Last year’s A&S Champion, Lissa Underhill, commissioned Annys and me to produce a scroll which would go to her successor at Yule. This one also eluded us for a long time, artisticly, until the details finally fell into place the week before the event. In a funny twist of fate, the person who most wanted to own this scroll ended up winning (for her second time) – Alesone displayed a range of different sugar works and methods, including an example of how bad sugar can go if there’s too much moisture in the air.

We ended up with a scroll text written between the two of us, which happily included an intial “A” which I could illuminate into a salamander enjoying proximity to a candle, the symbol of Arts & Sciences in the Society. The decorative borders are pulled from the Book of Hours for the Use of Paris, an example of which I found here. I haven’t gotten to working with raised gilding, otherwise I would have employed that method here. Annys had, by this time, truly begun to own the gothic hand she was working in, and the text really sells this piece. As pictured, it still has the lines we left for the name of the winner and the signatures of the Baron and Baroness.

Unfortunately for those who love a good piling-on of process shots… I don’t have too many, since this piece came together so quickly. I ‘ll see what I can find and put some up if they’re worth the trouble. 🙂

Red pencil, gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink on pergamenata. Roughly 4″ x 6.5″

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Brunissende’s backlog Harlequin scroll – 2011

This is a project that’s been long in coming, and I’m pleased to finally post about it. Over a year ago, there was a push to start making a dent in the backlog of baronial scrolls – either awards had gone out without them, or there hadn’t been time, what have you. Annys and I snatched up the assignment for Bruni’s Harlequin, which had been given many years back, but had lacked a scroll (despite having lovely wording by Baroness Sabine).

While my original plan involved making an elaborate mockup of a book, I set that idea aside when I saw two other -books-as-scrolls, both of which were far nicer and more well-thought-out than what I had in mind. Annys came to the rescue by finding a reference online to the Angers Hours, which was made near where Bruni’s persona lived and at around the same time. We pored over the examples and eventually found a perfect plate – an abbot receiving a heavenly vision of the Trinity. Except… since it was a scroll for Bruni, I realized it needed a slight change – nudity! What we ended up with was a portrait of Bruni, receiving Divine Inspiration for one of her scrolls, which all include a little nudity. Somewhere.

I sketched the piece out in my now-favorite red pencil, and then left it for a while, too afraid of messing up the lovely sketch. Eventually, I did follow through and painted it in gouache, then handed it over to Annys to letter. We presented it at Baronial Yule on December 3rd, to great reaction and a tear on Bruni’s part. Mission: ACCOMPLISHED.

Red pencil, gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink on pergamenata, roughly 8″ x 9.5″