Scriptorium – my vigil book calligraphy for Hrothgar’s vigil book

And again I have some lovely calligraphy for you. I proudly present to you a picture of the two pages with the calligraphy and pen work I made for Hrothgar’s vigil book. 😀

You maybe remember my recent posting “Scriptorium – sneak peek at yesterdays calligraphy for a vigil book…“. In this previous posting I was just able to show you some small sneak peek photos of the calligraphy for Hrothgar’s vigil book. And today I am able to proudly present to you the whole calligraphy. 😀

When I volunteered to create the first page for Hrothgar’s vigil book, my sweetheart gave me a text and a rather long wish list of elements he liked to see incorporated in the calligraphy for the first two pages. This elements were Hrothgar’s SCA achievements (awards) as well as a small hidden joke for those in the know.

As soon as I finished the calligraphy of the text on the first page I was feeling quite desperate. “Really? How am I supposed to find a place for all this achievements…”, I asked myself and then I suddenly had an idea. The corners of the page were still rather empty and so it came in rather handy that my sweetheart also asked me to make a border around the text. And what shall I say – I am very happy with the final result. I love it! 😀

And here a closer photo of the two pages for Hrothgar’s vigil book for you – enjoy! 😀

As you can see on the picture above, I got a lot of text from my sweetheart for this rather small page. Nevertheless, I tried my best to arrange it as good as possible. The rather simple border with Hrothgar’s awards really completes the design and makes it “round”, as I tend to say in German. 😀

It is really not easy for me to stay “inside the borders” when I am using this style. I admit it, I always get very excited and can’t resist to make nice long strokes – especially outside the self-set borders on the left and right side. But I enjoy doing this far too much to stop it. *lol*

…and here the second page for Hrothgar’s vigil book. My sweetheart asked me to create something nice to display Hrothgar’s “line of ancestors” within the SCA. That means that every person on this list was once “squired” to the person in the field above and once knighted, took on a “squire” themselves. I think it’s needless to say that this is a quite important thing in the SCA… 🙂 

…and last but not least I also have some information for you about my inspiration for the second page. It is basically based on the “Welfenstammbaum” from the 12th (/13th century?). But as you can see at the picture underneath, it is a very simplified version of it.

„Stammbaum-Welfen“ – Source: Wikimedia Commons.

I also wanted to insert the portraits in the archways. But when I tried to draw the first portrait inside the top archway, I was already struggling so much with getting the style right that I decided to leave them away.

You know, there are this kind of days when you can’t get something right, regardless how much you try… I try to adjust to this days by either delaying my work by one or two days or by adjusting my design. This time I adjusted the design because I knew that I didn’t want to wait one more day to finish it. 😀

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the extra information concerning my calligraphy for Hrothgar’s vigil book. And don’t forget – if you would like to try this style yourself, you can find and download my “Batarde cheating sheets” here: Scriptorium