Painting Project Completed
Presenting my painted set of Calontir’s entry level awards and a bit on how they’re created.
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Illuminating Details
What’s in manuscript illumination details? How do you create them? Find out how to increase your scribal detailing skills.
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When Do You Stop Fixing Things?
Scribal skill improvement comes with experience over time. There are ways to gain experience without a deadline.
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Making A Scroll With Arms
Heraldic art is valuable for scroll creation and the best way to personalize an award scroll.
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Playing With Symbols Gives That Zing
You find emojis, computer icons, road signs, logos, and emblems everywhere. They’re a useful eye-catching shorthand for small spaces. And were used in history the same way. Using these time-tested patterns on a scroll inspires the recipient or any viewer really. Symbols like eyes, hearts, hands, arrows, circles still evoke grand meaning. They add depth…
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The Scroll Colorant Blacklist
In Calontir, the SCA area where I live, you sometimes get into painting awards at an event. They are predesigned and painted like a coloring book. We call them “preprints”. Some kingdom’s call them “charters”. I’ve seen people take a few home from the scribe’s table to do later and that’s terrific. Each reign creates…
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People Of Color In SCA Award Scrolls
With western art books and resources being mostly produced by white people they tend to assume the white European as a human standard. And in Western European illuminated manuscripts there is a dearth of people of color. But they do exist. And all ethnicities are welcomed into the SCA. Dijon – BM – ms._0562 f….
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts 7
Two grotesques from the Vaux Psalter, Lambeth Palace Library MS 233 f.15r. Glad you are back for another perplexing manuscript picture. It’s hard to believe these two grotesques are from the lovely Vaux Psalter. Just look at the left grotesque’s fearful dirty look. Dramatically amazing. But what is it? And why? Michael Camille in his book Image On…
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts 5.
British Library Additional 14761 f. 30v c. 1340 Spain, N. E., Catalonia (Barcelona) I was surfing the British Library’s manuscript collection again for possible pictures to use on a scroll and noticed the cute bunnies in the manuscripts. Especially in the 14th century. So many, they weirdly multiplied like rabbits. But another thing you’ll notice is how…
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts 4
Cambrai Channsonier, MS. 126B fol. 132v, Bruges 1542 Bibliothèque Municipale, When you look through this 16th-century songbook made for a Bruges aristocrat you see it’s filled with artistic, decorative daily life images. But it also includes many that are bluntly bizarre or crazy. It’s the Cambrai Chansonnier, MS 0128 dated 1543. Its fun pictures are delicately drawn in…
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts 3
Link to image. When you look through this 13th-century manuscript made for the Pope you see it’s filled with giant killer bunnies, geese lynching wolves, and other crazy things. They are cute, silly, or a comment on Medieval daily life. But not all. This one pictures a dog hanging by its neck from a tree….
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Illuminated Diapering
One of the easiest ways you can embellish a scroll is to add diapering. Diapering is the geometric checker-board pattern you see in illuminated manuscripts. It adds dramatic visual interest and fills the vacuum medieval art abhorred. Link to image. Link to image. You may see them include gold leaf or without it. Link to image. Link…
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts 2
14th century (1349-1351) Austria – Lilienfeld Cod. 151: Concordantiae caritatis fol. 244v There is no reason you’d want to include a prejudicial illumination like this in SCA art. But why? What do you see? This 14th-century illumination shows a man wearing a Jews hat having sex, then being mortally stabbed for it. But there’s more that’s perplexing. What’s up with his pointy…
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Perplexing Pictures In Manuscripts
“Banquet With Courtesans In A Hostel” ca. 1455 – BNF, Paris Does this fun picture remind you of an SCA post revel? Music, food, and merry-making, but in Medieval clothing. Look again. What’s really going on? You see the musician, but one guy’s up-chucking and another’s getting handsy with a woman. The title divulges they’re cavorting with…
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Guide To Blank Border Scroll Creation
M. Rolf Hobart’s blank border entries at the Barony of Mag Mor’s 2017 Cattle Raids. At last falls Cattle Raids event in the Barony of Mag Mor, I was asked by a passing RUSH student, “What are those?” as he pointed to the blank scrolls’ displayed. I admit they might look a bit lost to the…
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Beginning SCA AoA Award Painting
Baronial Preprint Looking back over my posts I realize I haven’t told you about painting AOA award scrolls. Oops. Whether your Kingdom calls them “preprints” or “charters” they are a great way to learn illumination. And as you’re learning you’re doing a priceless service for your Kingdom or Barony. Monarchs of any SCA kingdom need…
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The Best "How-to" Decorative Letters Book
If you’ve looked at the stunning art in medieval manuscripts and wondered how they were made then the main book you need for learning illumination is The Illuminated Alphabet: An Inspirational Introduction to Creating Decorative Calligraphy by author Patricia Seligman and calligrapher Timothy Noad. As SCA scribes know, illumination is a unique craft with its own techniques. It…
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The Secrets Of Black And White Gouache
Today’s scribes learning to paint Calontir’s preprints often start with a Reeves gouache set for their paints. They’re an inexpensive student grade non-acrylic paint that does well for painting entry-level awards. What do you do when you use up your first paint, usually white? What is the best white gouache to buy?” In gouache, there are…
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Acanthus Leaves
British Library Border Clipping Acanthus leaf from my handout “Acanthus Leaves: Drawing and Painting” I love Acanthus leaves in art. They are an ornament that resembles leaves from the Mediterranean Acanthus plants. They have deeply cut leaves similar to thistles. I like Acanthus leaves because they are a curvy, variable decoration I can use in most any art medium or era. In…
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How To Use Heraldry On SCA Scrolls
Bi-lingual Hebrew-English Scroll After calligraphy heraldry is probably the most common motif I include in a scroll. Whether it’s a recipient’s arms, the order’s device or the Calontir banner I use them somewhere. Even if the recipient’s persona came from a culture that didn’t have heraldry. When I receive a scroll assignment I first collect as much information…
