A Court Barony for Ruth Baraskaya

 This is the first award of this level I've ever had the honor of painting, and I confess the words put me in a bit of a stressful position! I managed a draft, but the wonderful final draft is the work of master wordsmith Alys Mackyntoich. I am very, very grateful to her for her help. 

The imagery is a woman standing in a field, and in the original she holds an open book in her hand. As Ruth is known for her embroidery, I replaced the book with an embroidery hoop with a few black stitches on it, and a length of thread. I added also a coronet with 6 pearls, evidence of her new rank. 

The source for the scroll is Add MS 54782, housed at the British Library, f.66v for the imagery and various pages for the text. I had to modify the text layout significantly to accommodate the expanded text necessary for a Court Barony scroll, but was able to keep the feel of the scroll in tact. I am quite pleased with how it came together. 

gouache and shell gold on pergamenata, Pelikan ink

8 1/4" x 10 1/4" finished size
3 3/4" x 5 1/2" image size
3 3/4" x 5" text size 

Silver Wheel for Patience Faircloth

 I had so very, very much fun painting this for Patience - when I heard the award was going out, I did ask for the assignment and was thrilled I was able to get it. 

The words are by me, and the reference book for the scroll is Add MS 15281 from the British Library. 

gouache and shell gold on pergamenata
8 1/4" x 10 1/4" finished size
4" x 6" image size
2 3/4" x 4 3/4" text size

When you have to repair your own scroll...

A while ago I was in a relationship with someone who fancied themselves a great artist. Without asking me, they took my AoA scroll and painted on what they thought were my arms. Yes. They painted arms that weren't mine on my Mistress Sarah the Limner Award of Arms scroll. And if that wasn't bad enough, they painted on the scroll with testors and citadel enamel model paints. If I ever see this person again I might actually hit them.

The repair of this has been an interesting two days. First, scraping off the paint resulted in the paint dust beginning to stain the bristol ground... which meant that I stopped immediately, and changed tactic - I did keep scraping, but this time I tilted it so the dust fell straight away. A staedtler eraser took care of what was stuck to the bristol. I couldn't get all the paint because it's soaked into the paper, so I did what I could to rough up the surface. 

Then I painted an even layer of titanium white over the whole area, crossing over onto the paper. It is much, much larger than I think the shield area was every supposed to be... but, I wanted my paint layer to have at least some hold on the bristol, so here we are. 

I let that sit for 24 hours. 

Then, I painted on my arms with the lightest touch I've ever used, in an attempt to not pull up the white layer into my colors. I'm happy to say that it's worked as best it could. 

I let that sit for a few hours till dry, and when back to the the line work. 

I'm happy with the results. It's getting framed as soon as I know it's totally dry and then, hopefully, I never need to worry about repair or correction on this piece again. Yes, I should write my arms in eventually but I think I'll wait till my calligraphy is better to do that. 

AoA, with incorrect arms

AoA, with correct arms