A Golden Mantle in a Norse style

The second assignment! This one I went and asked for, but I dearly wanted to be the scribe. Thankfully my boss said yes ;)

I've worked from the Urnes Stave Church doorway in Oslo before, and I knew I wanted to for this one as well. See, the recipient is changing his persona as we speak. His lady and I spoke often about his choices, and he was settling on Norse/Rus. I decided a doorway was a perfect metaphor for his new persona, and rolled with it.


This is the doorway, in its entirety. A man can fit through that entrance. It depicts serpents and horses, and the pattern is echoed on the actual door itself as well. I've used the design in part, but I wanted the grand nature of the doorway, and I wanted it to frame the text, hence using the whole piece.


This was another exercise in color choices though, as the doorway may have once been painted it is now just the grey of weathered wood. You can see spots of ochre around the doorway, but that wasn't enough for me to base the whole piece on, so I instead went with colors I knew he'd like. 

Kazimierz has not yet chosen a new name, and so to reflect this, I used the words "in common tongue" before his name, to denote that he may be known as something else in the future. 

The piece is on natural pergamentata and painted with Winsor & Newton gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink.

The shading of the background is done in purple and grey, the interior is done in only red. All the text is black. The hand is a faux runic, and is completely in English. The only metallic on the whole scroll is the Golden Mantle itself and I seriously debated about doing that in a metallic paint, but ultimately decided that yes, as it's not actually part of the original design, it should be metallic. I altered the knotwork just enough to get a hanging point for the Mantle. That is the only alteration to the original piece.

This is not 1:1 to the original. I do admit that I left far less margin space on this piece than I do on many, but I am not worried. There is sufficient space for the mat to sit.

There are no solid blocks of color on this scroll - everything is shaded in tiny lines.