Portraiture



Although my Countess Scroll for Isabel had featured a representation of her, it was deliberately stylised after the manner of early mediaeval painting.  Realistic portraiture really only emerged towards the end of the SCA period. But it was certainly common by the 16th century, and so I felt justified in doing a lifelike portrait of Edith for her Lindquistring.  The style is perhaps rather too modern, but there is no doubt that such portrait scrolls are popular with their recipients, and portraiture was to become a feature of many of my subsequent award scrolls for this reason.  There is always a tension between producing an artwork to demonstrate ability in period techniques, and one that fits the purpose of being an award scroll, when producing such work, since the award scroll itself is an artificial construct of the SCA.

Around this time I had a crisis of confidence in using gold leaf, and this is clearly gold paint.  The original would have been "shell gold", which is in a sense gold paint, but using real gold as its pigment.

Edith's scroll being presented.



See below some subsequent examples of scrolls of mine that relied primarily on portraiture (others will appear elsewhere in this Blog).  







 

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