KWHSS was a blast.  I got to hang out with my brothers, the Four Horsemen of the College of Arms, picked up some scribal goodies (and yet, somehow managed to stay under budget), and learned a lot.  Plus, oh, the networking.

Also, next year is in Calontir.  Come see me.  Come take some classes.  Do fun things.  Bwa ha ha ha.

Anyway, you’re here for the scroll diary.  I got the assignment, and was told it needed to be a quick turnaround.  So, um.  I did something really stupid, especially when one has arthritis in hands.  I worked a nearly solid 16 hours on it, over the span of two days.  I definitely didn’t take enough breaks.  On the other hand, the weather was beautiful (low 80s and sun), so before the summer heat came and killed any desire to do anything outdoors, I took the opportunity to get things done.

Sir Gawain ap Tristram is a pillar of Calontir.  He’s been baron of Vatavia, is a Pelican, a knight, and a former principal herald.  To do this scroll for him was an incredible honour.

The scroll text was written by Duchess Aislinn, and fits that 14th c style pretty well.  I did a couple of read-throughs of the text, did some research (I knew Gawain had a Welsh persona) before settling on the Grey-FitzPayn Hours for inspiration.  Since it was an augmentation, and Gawain is a herald, I definitely wanted to make sure there was space for it, and the extant page had at least three instances of it.

So, like most scribal pieces, it starts off with layout.  I have a tendency to work small: being a lefty means that ink smearing is an ever-present danger, but working on smaller pieces (while being more period at that) lessens that chance of smearing (for me, anyway.  Your mileage may vary greatly.)  After pencil, I went in with calligraphy.  After that, it was painting.

I definitely wanted to include his family and other bits of his life in this piece, since he’s given so much to the kingdom.  It’s only right that he should also have his family in the scroll.  So, I included his wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and his grandsons, as well as his dogs.  There’s also a callback to the barony that he served as baron, too.  Below are thumbnails of his scroll from (mostly) start to finish.  I used lots of gouache, FineTec’s gold palette, and india ink.  My brush choices are small, with lots of 20/0s (I like Princeton’s minis), but there were a few 1s and 3/0s here and there.