…and now, that I got the “ok” to share my current project with you, I can spill the news and reveal what I was working on during the last days:
The scroll for the
“Rose Tournament”
at Gulf Wars! 😀
Though being asked to provide the scroll for the winner of the “Rose Tournament” at Gulf Wars – a very prestigious and great tournament – was quite a surprise for me, I felt very honored and immediately agreed to take on this task. And knowing that some of my dear friends as well as my husband will take part in this tournament – either as fighter or inspiring “rose” (former queens within the SCA who joined the Order of the Rose after their reign was over) – makes this special scroll assignment a very sweet task for me. But don’t worry – I am a quite “professional” scribe of the Kingdom of Meridies who is not biased and I promise to use my best hand to insert the name of the winner, whoever it might be… 😉
Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to find the inspiration for a scroll but as soon as I got to know about this scroll assignment, I already had an idea. Yeah, at times inspiration can strike very fast and I was definitely in the mood for some Manesse inspired artwork.
Given the purpose of the scroll – for the winner of the Rose tournament – and the sponsors – the Order of the Rose & our lovely Queen Oda – I immediately found some artwork which was ideal for my project. And after several days of drawing, painting and working out details, I am very happy to say that I just finished the main top part of the scroll:
Well, I have to admit that I struggled a bit with the faces of the ladies at first but, after getting some new fine brushes and a short break, I was finally able to finish them to my satisfaction. And though it might not look like a lot of work, it took me several days to finish this section. Yes, the details take a lot of time… 🙂
…and now let’s take a closer look at the details:
I hope you enjoy the progress so far as much as my husband and I do. 😀
And after finishing the work at the top section of the scroll, I will add the calligraphy next and then the surrounding border embellishment. But before my nib touches the pergamenata of this quite special tournament scroll, I have to “warm up” my hand a little.
Yeah, I admit it, I got a little bit “rusty” during the last months as I was busy working on an embroidery project and therefore haven’t practiced my calligraphy much. However, I can easily take care of this problem by simply practicing my hand on some blank scrolls with finished artwork I got some time ago…
And here they are – the first two scroll blanks on which I added my calligraphy in order to practice and “warm up” my hand:
The artwork on the scroll above was done by Isabella de Boyce. It is a blank scroll for the “Order of the Cygnet”. Initially it should have gotten the text for the “Cygnet’s nest” award but I overlooked the “nest” when I picked the text and copied the “Cygnet” award text by accident. Well, yeah, mistakes like this can happen from time to time…
…and I also finished the calligraphy on a “Guiding Hand” award, which you can see on the picture above. The artwork on this scroll was done by Rhonwyn Alyna Nic an Chrosam (?).
But this is enough of a break for now – I have to get something to eat and then back to my desk to do a little bit more calligraphy practice to remove the tension in my fingers… *sigh* There is still so much to accomplish before Gulf Wars and just so little time as my husband tends to remind me nearly daily…
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