RUSH
Kitten and I went to the Royal University of Scir-Hafoc yesterday, in Shire of Standing Stones, which is in Missouri. Long drive through the driving rain. I mean looooong drive through the very heavy driving rain. While we set out early enough that we should've made it to the first class at ten in the morning, we didn't get there till noon.
There was the first dumb thing I did. I should have stayed in the car until she found the right building. I walked too far. Actually, the first dumb thing was procrastinating on going out and getting the Handicapped tag as soon as I had legal ID that would make getting a Handicapped car tag something that wasn't a total nightmare. Once we got inside, we found out there were Handicapped spaces right by that building. Ow ow. Next time. Before next year, I will get that Handicapped tag so that poor Kitten doesn't have to hike two and a half miles in the driving rain.
I wore my old garb, a sun-faded purple and turquoise silk tunic and red and white striped cotton pants stuffed into my boots. The pants were a bit too short because I used to have taller boots when I made those pants, they were Pennsic pants. They were that short because I had nice Pennsic knee high moccasin boots and I don't know where those are or if I even still have them. They might have gone by the wayside in Texas or gotten moldy somewhere else along the road, which is annoying because they were so expensive yet comfortable -- the lacing adjusted for when my legs swelled. I'm not even going to try putting shoes on today.
It was all in one building. Yay. It had an elevator. Yay. I still walked around way too much but I had a lot of fun. We brought the folding chair and I carried too much art stuff thinking of getting in on art jams and the like, so even though I lightened the messenger bag a lot, I didn't manage to get it down to where I could carry that and the folding chair and get from one room to another fast enough to take classes that came right after each other. I relived flunking out of college.
I met the King of Calontir, he's extremely cool. King Angelo was in my first class or in the room with my first class, because he was coloring AOA scrolls. He was friendly, regal, encouraging and very cool even compared to other Kings that I've met, definitely an A&S king. I picked up two scroll blanks since I couldn't decide which design I liked better, and I'll be doing them up as nicely as I can before sending them back.
Okay, King Angelo was so inspiring that now I want to participate a lot and paint plenty of scrolls and maybe do at least one original one during his reign, unless it's almost over. The mark of a great King is being able to stir interest in doing cool stuff for the kingdom out of random members and new members. I'm new to the kingdom and currently new to the SCA again, after 30 years or so of mostly playing without a membership, we joined and have a family membership and a tiny little household: us, the adults in our house.
Two of these would be about half the work of the scrolls I did for Meridies, because those were 11" x 17" and Calontir believes in scrolls the recipient can frame nicely in an 8 1/2" x 11" document frame. They really are letter size. They looked smaller holding them because I'm so used to scrolls double that size, but because of that, the art is very delicate and intricate. I'm going to actually go through my books and google a bit online to look for style examples so that I don't accidentally use non-period colors in the work.
My first class was on designing AOA scrolls and peerage scrolls by Duchess Alethea Charle, O.L. It was great. I saw some styles that I'd never seen that seem popular in Calontir, and some interesting answers to the question of how to do period style scrolls when the style of the period would be a writ without any border or fancy coloring on it. There's two sorts, Writs and Bible pages, and what I've been used to in the SCA all along are Bible page style scrolls -- the grand illuminations and line fillers and grotesques and giant historiated capitals style is usually from the first page of a Gospel or something and drops back to being mostly just text on following pages in the examples.
The Duchess was very encouraging. I'm going to dare to try to do calligraphy on my scrolls even though Calontir does things a bit different -- the style of award scrolls in Calontir is something that people can date their awards to, it gets done in the style of the reign. It's cool in one way because then you get a chance to practice a particular style and by the end of that reign, you're going to be good at it -- in another it could be frustrating because my best style is Lindisfarne, Kells and Durrow and there doesn't seem to be much call for that here. Which is okay. I've done one scroll in this style before and while the calligraphy drove me nuts, I did manage to do it well.
If the scroll is done in Writ style usually the artist will send along a picture with it on a separate sheet of paper or vellum. I saw some of these and they were magnificent. I'm going to try to match the delicacy of the diapering I saw on some of those scrolls and pictures doing these two preprints, because I don't have a large portfolio of scrolls I did before in different styles. I had a color Xerox of the one I did for a friend in Northpass (East Kingdom) that would have looked fine next to the ones I saw up there, but I didn't have it with me and would have to tear apart my room to find it if I do still own it.
And when the reign lasts only six months that's just time enough to start getting into it, whatever it is, and see what comes up next. So it's not that onerous getting to study the style I sweated over last time, if I do one of the high end scrolls for these royals. I might have time to while they're still in office, I'd have to check the kingdom site to know when Crown is and Coronation.
And I'd better do and send these in this week so that they don't wind up relics of an earlier reign.
My second class was also scribal. Lady Eostre of Grimfells held a class on using modern drafting and design tools to assist scribe work, and I took it mostly for more interest in scribing than anything else right now and difficulty getting to other classes. Kitten has taken over garbing the household, to my great relief since all I do are unstructured t-tunics and things mostly. So I went in and got a couple of new ideas for toys I want from Blick and Office Depot that will really help once I start doing the original scrolls. I used a proportion wheel every day at work in the 80s, why didn't I ever think of using one at home to resize elements of medieval originals?
Also, I didn't know you could find covered palettes at Hobby Lobby for only a dollar, when they are the good kind of watercolor wells palettes for using gouache. They might be really good for doing small acrylic paintings too, because I can put a wet paper towel in the middle and cover them and maybe save paint from one session to the next if I don't wait too long. It'd be worth a dollar to experiment for the acrylics, it'd be very useful for gouache. And they're similar to my favorite gouache palette anyway, they just have lids. I wonder if Blick has them? Yep -- 69 cents, though it's separate for palette and cover. Well worth trying since I'm going to get active in scribing.
Probably because I copy them freehand or draw something in that style, but I could do a lot of cool stuff proportioning, scanning and printing out the stuff directly from the examples sometimes. If only before trace and transfer.
Ahh. Flipping through the handouts a day later, I've got a list of colors that are period. Trust other people's research on this. Hm. Vermilion isn't mentioned but I know good and darn well that Vermilion's period because it's in my medieval pigments and painting book, a reproduction of a 12th century book translated from the Latin. How to roast lead to get lead white, yellow, orange and red. Have your least talented apprentice grind those colors because they're toxic and might kill him. Cheery gentle kindly monk, that Theophilus. The book is On Divers Arts by (translated from) Theophilus, and I'm sure it's probably still available on Amazon because the demand for things like this is steady. I've also got Cennini's "The Craftsman's Handbook," but I think that is later period. Eh, it's in reach so I'll pull it down and check.
Original title Il Libro dell' Arte was written in Italian in fifteenth century Florence. There's an amusing chapter on the differences between translations and the weird guesses on some of the terms like "fat" and "lean" pigments. This translation tried to put it into terms understandable to artists more than to scholars and mentioned it if some term covered an entire category of pigments, like a term for earth reds that includes Venetian Red but also a lot of other good ones. It's cool. I've read it and used it and that's the little handbook for my Italian secondary persona, Adriano di Napoli.
On the upper level scrolls, doing them would seriously improve my calligraphy. Especially Textura, which is what I think the AOA scrolls are done in. Sometimes those are done in the style of the receiver too, so I might as well send some small sample of my knotwork and Half-Uncial hand too in case they happen to need a good scribe for someone who's Celtic and really would appreciate that style. Eh, I should probably not take on too much with this at first. While I am gaining a lot of strength, deadlines are not my friend, and they do these on pretty tight deadlines.
Just painting up the preprints and asking for more every time I do should keep me involved and do something steady for the kingdom. Kitten's all stoked about the SCA again too after we had such a great event. She met a Laurel named Kara who brought a loom that it looks as if HeraldoftheAbyss could build it, and she learned to spin. She's been spinning for years with some frustration and even has a tiny bottom weighted drop spindle that she used for spinning silk after a class at Pennsic or an unofficial class -- it was years ago and I wasn't there when she took spinning. But Kara got her sorted out on what she was doing that caused the most trouble and now she's spinning a lot faster and more smoothly. She says the Norse style spindle is a lot easier to use and get good results, it's got the weight toward the top of the stick with a hole in it for the thread being spun to go through, and spinners just roll the thing along their leg to spin.
This is a cool thing, and may result in my getting authentic period socks spun from black wool and knitted in period style. She took a period knitting class too. So we went our separate ways at the event but both of us had a great time. I missed a class on a particular battle and how it affected SCA armor, but I met a fighter wearing almost exactly my garb who gave me a great idea on how to deal with my too-short striped pants. Leg wrappings up to the knee would solve it completely. I might make some period shoes, his were pretty cool looking and those leg wrappings looked very warm and comfy for winter events.
I'm going to pose in my garb and a cloak Kitten gave me for a photo to put the cloak on her website for Foxtails Tailoring, since she's now going for a lot of SCA business in tailoring, mending and laundering garb made in authentic hard to handle materials with much delicate handwork.
I did not get an artwork done yesterday for ArtSoMoFo... it goes to show, I still have limits. By the time we got home I poured into my chair, did a little email and poked around a bit but was not up to drawing. I didn't even remember to post on ArtSoMoFo and went to bed at nine after staring dully at the screen for an hour just answering a couple of LJ comments from my gmail. I didn't even finish doing all my comments. But I wrote an eHow article before I left, while I was waking up slowly. Kitten got me up way early so I'd have at least an hour before I had to function, and my fingers function better than the rest of my body at that stage. Which is why I'm blogging of course. lol
Now all I have to do is draw oak bark and my article's done and I have a simple if not particularly grand artwork to post for today. Or maybe do another one so that I can make up for skipping yesterday.
Editing to fix a tag, I realized some of my readers might not be familiar with the Society for Creative Anachronism, so I'll post some links now: The main SCA site, national level, where you can find out what kingdom you're in and get to its webpage. We are in Calontir, in the Shire of Carlsby, which does not yet have a website. Kitten is volunteering for webmistress to put one up, which would be great since I'd love to have access to all the local events and meetings online. Print newsletters and things sometimes come late.
Calontir still maintains the old custom that you get the Kingdom Newsletter free with your membership in the SCA, which isn't always the case elsewhere. It's very cool they do this. I'm looking forward to getting publications after all those other times I joined and moved before any publications came. I actually bought a membership at Pennsic once but moved before I got any publications. They are good publications usually chock full of great art and useful articles on doing medieval things, making garb, making anything really. I may write for the Calontir publication once I've gotten it and have a style sample in front of me, it's not like I couldn't work from my sources and do some pretty nice scribe articles especially in my good styles.
Which may include Textura and Quadrata sometime, if this all holds true. They have no problem with my using regular cartridge style chisel pens for calligraphy on scrolls, it's more for Arts & Sciences competitions and pure personal pride that people get super authentic and use oak gall ink with quills on parchment. Not that that stuff isn't appreciated! Duchess Alethea mentioned that she started with those cartridge calligraphy pens -- Sheaffer, Osmiroid, my current set is Staedtler because Kitten and I bought gift sets of those for each other last year at Yule. But she found the dip pens a little more controllable in the long run. I'm having trouble finding exactly the right dip pen point to get good results from them, though I'll keep trying of course.
I did my good scroll on parchment using a quill that I bought at an SCA demo, cut for me by the seller, which is the very best chisel tip pen I own. It's safely set aside in a box and stored for use only on doing very good scrolls on parchment, since I don't want to wear it out. Because the rain slowed our journey, I didn't get to take the class on quills and thus get the new quills I bought from Blick cut by an expert. So I will have to bite the bullet, take a new razorblade and try it for myself copying my old one. Hopefully it'll work and I won't wind up spending a fortune buying quills before I learn to cut one that functions.
There was the first dumb thing I did. I should have stayed in the car until she found the right building. I walked too far. Actually, the first dumb thing was procrastinating on going out and getting the Handicapped tag as soon as I had legal ID that would make getting a Handicapped car tag something that wasn't a total nightmare. Once we got inside, we found out there were Handicapped spaces right by that building. Ow ow. Next time. Before next year, I will get that Handicapped tag so that poor Kitten doesn't have to hike two and a half miles in the driving rain.
I wore my old garb, a sun-faded purple and turquoise silk tunic and red and white striped cotton pants stuffed into my boots. The pants were a bit too short because I used to have taller boots when I made those pants, they were Pennsic pants. They were that short because I had nice Pennsic knee high moccasin boots and I don't know where those are or if I even still have them. They might have gone by the wayside in Texas or gotten moldy somewhere else along the road, which is annoying because they were so expensive yet comfortable -- the lacing adjusted for when my legs swelled. I'm not even going to try putting shoes on today.
It was all in one building. Yay. It had an elevator. Yay. I still walked around way too much but I had a lot of fun. We brought the folding chair and I carried too much art stuff thinking of getting in on art jams and the like, so even though I lightened the messenger bag a lot, I didn't manage to get it down to where I could carry that and the folding chair and get from one room to another fast enough to take classes that came right after each other. I relived flunking out of college.
I met the King of Calontir, he's extremely cool. King Angelo was in my first class or in the room with my first class, because he was coloring AOA scrolls. He was friendly, regal, encouraging and very cool even compared to other Kings that I've met, definitely an A&S king. I picked up two scroll blanks since I couldn't decide which design I liked better, and I'll be doing them up as nicely as I can before sending them back.
Okay, King Angelo was so inspiring that now I want to participate a lot and paint plenty of scrolls and maybe do at least one original one during his reign, unless it's almost over. The mark of a great King is being able to stir interest in doing cool stuff for the kingdom out of random members and new members. I'm new to the kingdom and currently new to the SCA again, after 30 years or so of mostly playing without a membership, we joined and have a family membership and a tiny little household: us, the adults in our house.
Two of these would be about half the work of the scrolls I did for Meridies, because those were 11" x 17" and Calontir believes in scrolls the recipient can frame nicely in an 8 1/2" x 11" document frame. They really are letter size. They looked smaller holding them because I'm so used to scrolls double that size, but because of that, the art is very delicate and intricate. I'm going to actually go through my books and google a bit online to look for style examples so that I don't accidentally use non-period colors in the work.
My first class was on designing AOA scrolls and peerage scrolls by Duchess Alethea Charle, O.L. It was great. I saw some styles that I'd never seen that seem popular in Calontir, and some interesting answers to the question of how to do period style scrolls when the style of the period would be a writ without any border or fancy coloring on it. There's two sorts, Writs and Bible pages, and what I've been used to in the SCA all along are Bible page style scrolls -- the grand illuminations and line fillers and grotesques and giant historiated capitals style is usually from the first page of a Gospel or something and drops back to being mostly just text on following pages in the examples.
The Duchess was very encouraging. I'm going to dare to try to do calligraphy on my scrolls even though Calontir does things a bit different -- the style of award scrolls in Calontir is something that people can date their awards to, it gets done in the style of the reign. It's cool in one way because then you get a chance to practice a particular style and by the end of that reign, you're going to be good at it -- in another it could be frustrating because my best style is Lindisfarne, Kells and Durrow and there doesn't seem to be much call for that here. Which is okay. I've done one scroll in this style before and while the calligraphy drove me nuts, I did manage to do it well.
If the scroll is done in Writ style usually the artist will send along a picture with it on a separate sheet of paper or vellum. I saw some of these and they were magnificent. I'm going to try to match the delicacy of the diapering I saw on some of those scrolls and pictures doing these two preprints, because I don't have a large portfolio of scrolls I did before in different styles. I had a color Xerox of the one I did for a friend in Northpass (East Kingdom) that would have looked fine next to the ones I saw up there, but I didn't have it with me and would have to tear apart my room to find it if I do still own it.
And when the reign lasts only six months that's just time enough to start getting into it, whatever it is, and see what comes up next. So it's not that onerous getting to study the style I sweated over last time, if I do one of the high end scrolls for these royals. I might have time to while they're still in office, I'd have to check the kingdom site to know when Crown is and Coronation.
And I'd better do and send these in this week so that they don't wind up relics of an earlier reign.
My second class was also scribal. Lady Eostre of Grimfells held a class on using modern drafting and design tools to assist scribe work, and I took it mostly for more interest in scribing than anything else right now and difficulty getting to other classes. Kitten has taken over garbing the household, to my great relief since all I do are unstructured t-tunics and things mostly. So I went in and got a couple of new ideas for toys I want from Blick and Office Depot that will really help once I start doing the original scrolls. I used a proportion wheel every day at work in the 80s, why didn't I ever think of using one at home to resize elements of medieval originals?
Also, I didn't know you could find covered palettes at Hobby Lobby for only a dollar, when they are the good kind of watercolor wells palettes for using gouache. They might be really good for doing small acrylic paintings too, because I can put a wet paper towel in the middle and cover them and maybe save paint from one session to the next if I don't wait too long. It'd be worth a dollar to experiment for the acrylics, it'd be very useful for gouache. And they're similar to my favorite gouache palette anyway, they just have lids. I wonder if Blick has them? Yep -- 69 cents, though it's separate for palette and cover. Well worth trying since I'm going to get active in scribing.
Probably because I copy them freehand or draw something in that style, but I could do a lot of cool stuff proportioning, scanning and printing out the stuff directly from the examples sometimes. If only before trace and transfer.
Ahh. Flipping through the handouts a day later, I've got a list of colors that are period. Trust other people's research on this. Hm. Vermilion isn't mentioned but I know good and darn well that Vermilion's period because it's in my medieval pigments and painting book, a reproduction of a 12th century book translated from the Latin. How to roast lead to get lead white, yellow, orange and red. Have your least talented apprentice grind those colors because they're toxic and might kill him. Cheery gentle kindly monk, that Theophilus. The book is On Divers Arts by (translated from) Theophilus, and I'm sure it's probably still available on Amazon because the demand for things like this is steady. I've also got Cennini's "The Craftsman's Handbook," but I think that is later period. Eh, it's in reach so I'll pull it down and check.
Original title Il Libro dell' Arte was written in Italian in fifteenth century Florence. There's an amusing chapter on the differences between translations and the weird guesses on some of the terms like "fat" and "lean" pigments. This translation tried to put it into terms understandable to artists more than to scholars and mentioned it if some term covered an entire category of pigments, like a term for earth reds that includes Venetian Red but also a lot of other good ones. It's cool. I've read it and used it and that's the little handbook for my Italian secondary persona, Adriano di Napoli.
On the upper level scrolls, doing them would seriously improve my calligraphy. Especially Textura, which is what I think the AOA scrolls are done in. Sometimes those are done in the style of the receiver too, so I might as well send some small sample of my knotwork and Half-Uncial hand too in case they happen to need a good scribe for someone who's Celtic and really would appreciate that style. Eh, I should probably not take on too much with this at first. While I am gaining a lot of strength, deadlines are not my friend, and they do these on pretty tight deadlines.
Just painting up the preprints and asking for more every time I do should keep me involved and do something steady for the kingdom. Kitten's all stoked about the SCA again too after we had such a great event. She met a Laurel named Kara who brought a loom that it looks as if HeraldoftheAbyss could build it, and she learned to spin. She's been spinning for years with some frustration and even has a tiny bottom weighted drop spindle that she used for spinning silk after a class at Pennsic or an unofficial class -- it was years ago and I wasn't there when she took spinning. But Kara got her sorted out on what she was doing that caused the most trouble and now she's spinning a lot faster and more smoothly. She says the Norse style spindle is a lot easier to use and get good results, it's got the weight toward the top of the stick with a hole in it for the thread being spun to go through, and spinners just roll the thing along their leg to spin.
This is a cool thing, and may result in my getting authentic period socks spun from black wool and knitted in period style. She took a period knitting class too. So we went our separate ways at the event but both of us had a great time. I missed a class on a particular battle and how it affected SCA armor, but I met a fighter wearing almost exactly my garb who gave me a great idea on how to deal with my too-short striped pants. Leg wrappings up to the knee would solve it completely. I might make some period shoes, his were pretty cool looking and those leg wrappings looked very warm and comfy for winter events.
I'm going to pose in my garb and a cloak Kitten gave me for a photo to put the cloak on her website for Foxtails Tailoring, since she's now going for a lot of SCA business in tailoring, mending and laundering garb made in authentic hard to handle materials with much delicate handwork.
I did not get an artwork done yesterday for ArtSoMoFo... it goes to show, I still have limits. By the time we got home I poured into my chair, did a little email and poked around a bit but was not up to drawing. I didn't even remember to post on ArtSoMoFo and went to bed at nine after staring dully at the screen for an hour just answering a couple of LJ comments from my gmail. I didn't even finish doing all my comments. But I wrote an eHow article before I left, while I was waking up slowly. Kitten got me up way early so I'd have at least an hour before I had to function, and my fingers function better than the rest of my body at that stage. Which is why I'm blogging of course. lol
Now all I have to do is draw oak bark and my article's done and I have a simple if not particularly grand artwork to post for today. Or maybe do another one so that I can make up for skipping yesterday.
Editing to fix a tag, I realized some of my readers might not be familiar with the Society for Creative Anachronism, so I'll post some links now: The main SCA site, national level, where you can find out what kingdom you're in and get to its webpage. We are in Calontir, in the Shire of Carlsby, which does not yet have a website. Kitten is volunteering for webmistress to put one up, which would be great since I'd love to have access to all the local events and meetings online. Print newsletters and things sometimes come late.
Calontir still maintains the old custom that you get the Kingdom Newsletter free with your membership in the SCA, which isn't always the case elsewhere. It's very cool they do this. I'm looking forward to getting publications after all those other times I joined and moved before any publications came. I actually bought a membership at Pennsic once but moved before I got any publications. They are good publications usually chock full of great art and useful articles on doing medieval things, making garb, making anything really. I may write for the Calontir publication once I've gotten it and have a style sample in front of me, it's not like I couldn't work from my sources and do some pretty nice scribe articles especially in my good styles.
Which may include Textura and Quadrata sometime, if this all holds true. They have no problem with my using regular cartridge style chisel pens for calligraphy on scrolls, it's more for Arts & Sciences competitions and pure personal pride that people get super authentic and use oak gall ink with quills on parchment. Not that that stuff isn't appreciated! Duchess Alethea mentioned that she started with those cartridge calligraphy pens -- Sheaffer, Osmiroid, my current set is Staedtler because Kitten and I bought gift sets of those for each other last year at Yule. But she found the dip pens a little more controllable in the long run. I'm having trouble finding exactly the right dip pen point to get good results from them, though I'll keep trying of course.
I did my good scroll on parchment using a quill that I bought at an SCA demo, cut for me by the seller, which is the very best chisel tip pen I own. It's safely set aside in a box and stored for use only on doing very good scrolls on parchment, since I don't want to wear it out. Because the rain slowed our journey, I didn't get to take the class on quills and thus get the new quills I bought from Blick cut by an expert. So I will have to bite the bullet, take a new razorblade and try it for myself copying my old one. Hopefully it'll work and I won't wind up spending a fortune buying quills before I learn to cut one that functions.