Tuesday, January 20, 2009

SCA art


In the SCA (www.sca.org) when you are awarded for something you get a "scroll". These are uaualy based on Medieval/Reanaissance books of Hours or other books from that Period. This is the latest and most Period (appropriate for the time we cover in the SCA). It was done for a VERY talented Lady (http://aneira.org/)for her recognition as a laurel (the highest award you can get for the Arts), it's equal to a Knighthood but for the Arts.


Laurel Scroll based on The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, plate 3 (Sir John Mandeville writing an account of his voyage), Prague circa 1410. I changed Sir John to Mistress Gwerfyl and made his servant her son. I changed the colors in the window to match Her Arms and added gold on the flowers plus the Laurel wreath. I tinted the Velum with egg tempera and the entire thing is done in egg tempera except for the white which is an opaque watercolor,. the ink used is oak gall.

She loved it and apparently many have commented on my portraits of her and her son. I wasn't sure I captured them very well.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Beautiful work (as usual. :) I was most taken, at first glance, with the details on the top but, looking at it at full-view, really liked the folds on the cloth, both her dress and the curtain behind her. (Probably because painting folds in cloth intimidates the heck out of me!)

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  2. Tristan:

    Wonderful scrollwork as always. I was somewhat disappointed with the scanned image, though, as I couldn't easily read the message at the bottom. Did you intentionally blur this for privacy's sake?

    And now I know where you "borrowed" (okay, drew inspiration from) the look of the top of the Haunted House drawing you drew at my behest. Did I ever send you a decent scan of that? The penwork has faded somewhat in places over the years, but, when I scanned it, I just kept reducing the number of available colors down and down until it was just black and white. Then, I cleaned THAT up just a tiny bit to restore it to the intent of the original piece. I didn't monkey with it beyond that (not like some pinhead colorizing an old Frank Sinatra movie and giving Sinatra BROWN eyes!) -- perfection doesn't need improvement. ;)

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