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).  







 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A long-awaited Laurel Scroll

Image
 This scroll was commissioned at the beginning of 2020.  You can guess the rest.  By the time I had completed it, it was apparent it wasn't going to be presented any time soon, so I finished it without adding the date, which I was finally able to add a month ago, and the scroll was presented yesterday.  So far my record for the longest delay between my doing a scroll and it being presented, but I have another one still awaiting presentation which will beat that record!
Read more

Illuminated Poem: Ranulf, Earl of Chester

Image
  Langland's "Piers Ploughman" mentions in passing that Robin Hood and Ranulf, Earl of Chester were both popular characters in the everyday tales of late 14th Century England.  Robin Hood, of course, has survived,  Ranulf has not.  So I thought it was time to revive him.  Unfortunately, by Langland's time, three Earls of Chester had been called Ranulf/Randolph.  I just picked the one whom I thought would give me the best story (Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester, 1099–1153). As the plan for these illuminated poems, when finished, is to present them as "The Canterbury Out-takes" (Poems by Chaucer that never made the final cut!) they had to be illustrated in a style between the writing of the Canterbury Tales and the "Final Cut"... Caxton's printed edition.  The borders are inspired by "The Carpentin Hours" and the first illustration by a manuscript of Josephus' "Histories of the Jews" commissioned by Edward IV, so from
Read more

Winter Poem for Yule Ball

 The Bardic Challenge for Yule Ball 2021 was to produce a piece of work on the theme of "Winter".  I looked for inspiration to the traditional symbols for each month, as used in calendars from Books of Hours and some wall paintings, and used those for the three winter months, namely: December: Killing the Pig January: Feasting indoors February: Sitting by the fire. When I came to perform my poem, the sheets of paper on which it was written had disappeared!  I was invited instead to record a performance of it, which is this:
Read more