One for a fencer

I know many fencers, and I've painted scrolls for people who do fencing, but until this one I hadn't painted a scroll for a fencer.

Check!

This was a fun one - simple but nice.  I've done elaborate and I wanted to know that I could do something with very little paint.  Turns out, yes. I look at this one and I know what I could change - what I'll do better next time. Mostly I think the font size is too big, but I'm a novice calligrapher and I'm chalking that up to rookie mistakes.  Really, I wanted to paint a rapier, and I'm happy with how that came out.

I left a lot more margin this time, so matting should be pretty easy for the recipient. This is almost square too, which is an odd format for me, but again - pretty ok with that since I wasn't using a predefined layout.

Some of my scrolls are definitely "copies" of period works - it's easy to look at the folio and say "yes, she used this one."  I find though that I like to change it up as well, to go a non-traditional route and steer away from the Books of Hours for a while and see what my mind comes up with.  I know the rules of layout, and with those in your arsenal it's easier to create instead of copy.

I love both methods of scroll creation, it's really just whatever I'm in the mood to do when I sit at my desk.