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March 2011 Pikestaff cover (January 2011)

Viking Snowgirls Pikestaff cover

"Ian Raven painted me."

More art for the Pikestaff! I’ve now done two covers, both for the month of March, six years apart. I’m told that I could, if  I chose, “own” the March cover. This amuses me. (Of course, this becomes academic should the print edition of the newsletter go the way of the dodo, as it could due to budget cuts and pressure to move to electronic distibution.)

I chose a Norse winter theme this time, based around an image I had in my sketchbook of my wife and my older daughter, arrayed in all their naalbound viking finery, engaged in a snowball fight. From there, I created several small art bits to use for filling space.

My inspiration for all of this was initially the sketch (after the jump), but while researching the extra drawings, I became intrigued by the concept of viking graffitti, particularly that found in the burial mound at Maeshowe, Orkney. The runes at the bottom, which read, “Ian Raven painted me”, are based on the runic writing found in that mound, remnants of a 12th century break-in by a band of vikings seeking shelter from a snowstorm. The border around the cover image draws from several standing stones found in Gotland (an island county in Sweden). The oar is copied from an extant longship find, and the carved wooden bear and the comb are drawn from memory of when I studied vikings as a youngster. The runes (the letters f and o, for no other reason than that I liked them) are based on a set I made in college, which in turn were based on a set I studied at the time.

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Lissa’s Harlequin scroll

Lissa's Harlequin scroll

Lissa is one of those people who one hopes to see in the SCA – interested in so many aspects of medieval life, and always trying new things. She’s become aces at fiber arts – spinning, weaving and knitting – not to mention illumination and cooking, all in addition to fencing. She recently won the baronial Arts and Sciences Championship with her fiber work. For her excellence in these artistic endeavors, Their Excellencies Bhakail made her a companion of the Harlequin, our baronial arts and sciences award, and Annys and I were given the commission for her scroll.

For her scroll, I wanted something distinctly Lissa.

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Yule Menu Scroll (2010)

Yule Menu 2010

Annys and I produced a spiffy menu for last year’s Baronial Yule, and we were asked to do a similar job this year. Since Alesone’s inspiration was “an Andalusian and French feast, as interpreted by an English cook”, we spent some time poring over Andalusian manuscripts for our own inspiration. We eventually found a sample text which lent itself to having three distinct sections within the text, and an intricate illuminated medallion off to the side. Here’s one of the sources, complete with “heavy metal bands in Arabic” section, right in the middle.

In any event, we elected to display the menu in three languages – English, Arabic, and French. I’d like to point out that Annys knocked the Arabic right the heck out of the park. 🙂

For the medallion, I created an Andalusian-flavored fire-breathing salamander dancing in arabasque flames, within a border drawn from the medallion samples we found. The final piece was executed on Arches hot-press, with Higgins Eternal black ink, red and blue Windsor Newton ink, and gouache. Note: Once again, modern reproduction methods fail utterly in capturing the real look and effect of gilded surfaces. 🙂 I’ll put up the process shots in a bit.

 

Arches hot-press, with Higgins Eternal black ink, red and blue Windsor Newton ink, and gouache. 

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EK Website – Region maps

Tir Mara map
Northern Region map
Central Region map
Southern Region map

These started life as fairly mundane supplied maps with local SCA land groups marked out, and I was asked to “period-ify” them for the EK site. My first thought was “HOLY HANDBAGS I don’t have time to get materials and draw these things out, marking the baronies and cantons and such!” So I put it aside.

A little later, I realized that because I know the Photoshops, I might be able to work with the borders in the original, but refine them back from “clearly digital in nature” to “looks like ink”. I did a few tests, and combined with a lovely old paper texture I have in my creative arsenal, I found a relatively quick and painless way to go from modern map to ancient cartography. The group names are typeset in a lovely font called Dei Gratia. The images were produced with clear backgrounds so we only needed to code one popup with the background in it, and the four separate maps are includes based on which link is clicked.

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East Kingdom Outfitters art

EK Outfitters Zazzle store banner
We're from the East - We're friendly.

I produced several items for East Kingdom Outfitters, an on-demand swag store benefiting the EK Royal Travel Fund. The idea was to offer imprinted items with Eastern images, things which would instill kingdom pride (much like sports team apparel). I was tasked with creating some original art, and also re-purposing existing art (like group heraldry) for the site as well. Among other things, I created an image called “We’re From the East – We’re Friendly” and the logo for the site.

The logo was done completely digitally, but the “We’re Friendly” art was much more involved. It began as an ink line drawing, which I scanned and cleaned. I set type in Illustrator and painted it in Photoshop over the course of many days (two hours a day of train ride is useful for that).

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Griff’s Order of the Salamander scroll (2009)

Griff's salamander scroll

Our local barony’s service award is the Order of the Salamander. Members of this order are recognized for a career of exemplary service to the group, and wear a medallion of a salamander on a red ribbon.

A good friend was to receive this honor, and Annys and I were given the scroll commission. We based it on a sixteenth-centry example of a writ for a knight of the Order of the Garter, both in text structure and in format. We thought it would be a cool touch to replace the seal of the Garter with something more appropriate to our sea-faring and foppish friend, whose baronial title (one of many) is Admiral of the Bhakail Navy. I found an Elizabethan-era example of what they thought sea-going vessels looked like, and based our “seal” on that, complete with sail art for the award and his personal arms.

Note: because he has a letter of marque from the barony (also one from the Kingdom, but that’s different), he is a privateer, if you please. Call him a “pirate” at your own peril, especially if he’s standing on the deck of your ship, pointing out how nice it is of you to donate so generously to the Baronial Coffers.

Arches hot-press watercolor paper; calligraphy in black, sepia, and red ink, illumination in gouache and ink.

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Yule menu scroll (2009)

Yule menu 2009

For THL Alesone’s first feast, she opted to recreate a multi-course above-the-salt/below-the-salt English manor feast, firmly within the Elizabethan traditon. In addition to doing copious research (that research earned her the baronial Arts and Sciences Championship), she commissioned a traditional menu card for the tables from my wife Annys and me.

When we work together, Annys handles the calligraphy, and I do the “makin’ pictures” part. Between us, we produced this piece – complete with multiple period spellings (or mispellings, as it were), in-jokes, portraits of Their Excellencies Bhakail and the Marquessa of Black Icorndall, and a portrait of the Artist as A Young Party Crasher (Hi!). For some reason, people now expect all of our scrolls to have a flamingo in them.

Closeup of feast scene

My biggest regret on this was that my plan to ink over the painted art failed miserably (at least in my mind). My actual statement was along the lines of “Well, $&*#. It was a fantastic painting, now it’s a ham-handed mess.” Everyone I’ve spoken to about this violently disagrees with me, though.

Arches hot-press watercolor paper; calligraphy in black and red ink, illumination in gouache and ink.

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Griff’s Salamander scroll – Process images

boat sketch

Initial sketch with notes to myself

I shot the series that follows as I painted the boat for the Salamander scroll in the previous post. This is partially for my benefit, and partially because it’s kind of neat to show how this image went together. They’re cameraphone quality, so I’ve left them humongous to preserve any details that managed to get in there.

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2009 Known World Academy of the Rapier/Known World Costuming Symposium website and swag art

KWAR/KWCS swag art

I built and co-maintained the website for KWAR/KWCS 2009, designing it to look as if it had been illuminated and painted. This was a pretty decent challenge, as I’m not a painter, and this was going on the web. The base images are ink drawings, digitally painted in Photoshop. Once we had the site laid out, I designed the image which would eventually grace the event swag (see above.) This was produced on-demand at Zazzle.com.

The real site is long gone, but here’s the sample site. Unfortunately, it looks like the “penguin cam” link is dead too, but I keep holding out hope.

EDIT: Wonder of wonders! The penguin cam is working again! Life is the tiniest bit better today because of it.