Silver Crescent - Fortune, Part 2

Getting down to business...

I went with Simona to Claytime in Shrewsbury which is a paint your own pottery studio.  This place would be my base of operations for May and June....and is like five minutes from Fortune's house and a frequent hang out for her household.  If you did not think I was paranoid she would just burst in while I was in the middle of painting, you are wrong.

In our first visit, Simona and I wandered around looking for a plate with a nice, large edge and a shallow bowl.  I didn't find what I wanted.  We wandered around some more, chatted, and then we find one.  It's the only one in stock, wasn't too big, and looked like it would work.

Having only done paint your own pottery twice before, I needed to re-familiarize myself with how this process worked.  After picking a base coat of a light sand/ neutral color, I determined the brushes were not going to cut it for the detail work I needed to do.  Even the adult bushes (re: smaller than the gigantic ones the kids use) were not going to give me crisp lines and would make the portrait sheer hell to paint.  In this first visit, we finished the base coat and I added my marker's mark (a blue daisy) to the back over the price (in case that didn't burn off).  This was used for the identifier to the piece so I didn't have to write my name on it.  Turns out an identifier wouldn't even be needed, which I'll get to later.

Graphite pencils were a no-go for tracing.  Claytime cannot guarantee all of it will burn off in the kiln, so they suggest using felt tip markers.  The other valuable piece of information Simona was able to pull out of them was I could use watercolor pencils to draw on the place which would then be hidden.  I had no idea these even existed and of course Marieta came to my rescue with these.  Thyra also introduced me to chalk paper (instead of the graphite transfer paper I was planning on using) which let me sketch normally instead of making a mess on the plate itself.  This was INSTRUMENTAL in getting most of the designs on the plate itself.

I joke that I spent hours at Claytime, but I also spent a fair amount of time sketching at home, transferring the designs, and generally yelling at paper.  The other thing I did?  Layout design and measuring.  I have never done so much math and measuring for a scroll in my entire life! The layout I decided on relayed on the circles being radially symmetrical and their background sections with stripes to be proportional.  First this meant the entire lip edge of the plate had to be measured and marked off evenly.  I used a template for the circles and the border/wheel on Fortune's heraldry.  Everything marked off was done in watercolor pencil.

More measuring...more measuring....

I begin the sketching of the leaf and vine motif and I'm happy with it.  I go to transfer it to the plate and it's waaaaaay too small.  My solution was to repeat the vine pattern to fill up the space.  To me, this made it feel like the color had more to contrast to and struck a nice balance.  This also left me room for the tiny bee on the right panel.

It's at this point that I started to put the paint on the plate....

Embarrassingly, I had a flair up of pain from my lingering tennis elbow issue (hence the arm brace).  Good news - when you paint with friends, they can take progress pictures for you!

Claytime was enormously accommodating to my long painting sessions and spreading out on the table at points.  It turns out that when you're happy to share a table with other people (I'll get to that) and you behave like a normal human, they love you.  After each session, I took the plate home and thought about the next steps.

You can see the lines from the layout design.  These were all done in watercolor pencil (thin lines).  The thick lines are the first instances of the paint going on.  It looks like blue now, but it will darken once fired.

A few sessions in and I have some clear progress.  Most of the staff now knows about "the plate" and I have one regular gal on staff who knows me on sight.

So many lines to paint.....so many....

Most of the "easy" part is done.

And now we get to the part where I dreaded working on this...the protrait.  It's been said elsewhere in my blog that I hate drawing people.  I feel like a massive art-impostor trying to draw people because I cannot make them look right.  The amount of sketches I threw out that no one saw or that were drawn,had comments,hated, and then threw out are numerous.  Part of my problem was fear of the derp face (though it's period) and the other part was trying to blend a real like protrait style with the majolica style.  I ended up going with just a majolica portrait after receiving some wise and balanced input.

Sometimes you need to eat junk food and use your light table as a desk while watching  HGTV to be properly inspired.

The hair under went some revisions at the Quintavia Business meeting, but this was the most successful sketch.  I opted to do Fortune's hair uncovered as that's how she wears it to events usually and the bun is one of her signature styles for no-nonsense mischief.  Most of the plates depicted a veil or hat of some sort.  That idea was discarded after disastrous attempts of putting a coronet on previous sketches.  I used my light pad to traces the curly-queues of the banner because at this point it was 10pm and I had to go paint the next day.  The lettering hand on the banner is a humanist.  The portrait was transferred using chalk paper (my savior) and I was then good to go!

Take that, tennis elbow!  I'm mostly free of your sabotage!

Lookin' good!

The next steps were the tedious parts: the scales, the brush lining, and the signatures.  Remember when I said I would share a table with other people?  Yeah.  One session of painting I was at the end of a table near and aisle where one kid would constantly hit the back of my chair as they ran by.  (Child running in a pottery studio...think on that....)  The fifth or so time it happened, I think I actually swore because my brush skipped.  At that point, the dad of said free running child finally noticed what the kid was doing (because up until now he's been wrangling two other screaming terrors).  And lo, holy hell was reigned down on said child by their parent and many apologies were made.  I was actually more embarrassed and apologized for swearing.  The next session I was at, I sat with Captain Shakey-Table himself.  I kept my expletives to myself this time.

Boooyah!  This baby is DONE!!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaay!  I'm dooooooooone!

My artist mark.

My Claytime staff friend snapped this photo for me. :)

I may have said to the staff if it breaks in the kiln, I'll cry. 

Weeks pass and then I get this photo in a text message from Simona who went to go pick it up.

Dear god, I'm a lunatic for doing this....

But wait...there's more!  I decided this needed a scroll for the royals to sign the week before it was due (in between another scroll project and silk banner painting).

Eva wrote a lovely sonnet for this because she is amazing.

Calligraphy hand - Humanist by me

Words - Eva Woderose

Congrats, Fortune!  May you continue to smile upon Quintavia.

Special thanks to:

The ideas department: Simona bat Leon

Claytime painting company: Simona bat Leon, Marieta Charay
Sketch consultants: Nataliia Evganova, Eva Woderose, Thyra Eiriksdottir, Marieta Charay
Sounding board: Sergei Rozvad syn
Cheering section: House Strangewayes, Darostur, assorted members of Sharc and Lochleven

Vigil Planning for Matthias - Part 3

In this post, I give credit where credit is due as I talk about the AMAZING banners that were made for the vigil and the awesome people who contributed.

Research - Countess Marguerite
We reached out to Meggie as our local "person who knows stuff about silk painting stuff" and she put together a fantastic Pintrest board of information of how silk dyeing works, what to use, etc.  The coolest thing though was she did the research for period Austrian/German banners!

https://www.pinterest.com/dervishspin/silk-painting/

I want to call attention to this manuscript since this was the main source we used for the banner:

Schwenkles!

Kind of weird nerdy fact - the middle orange banner has a Moor's head on there. Apparently that was a common "thing" to find in Germany on various coats of arms. See also Pope Benedict XVI's papal coat of arms as well which contains the "Moor of Freising" which is specific to Archdioses of Munich and Freising. I found out that nugget when I was going down a rabbit hole of researching the Holy See and papal coats of arms a while ago.

The "Oklahoma" shape of the banners is smack dab in the correct time period for Matthias' persona and is something we hadn't seen done with other banners. Meggie's idea of the motto banner to go with it is from the unicorn illumination in the same Pintrest board. She told us of her research about how unicorns were a very appropriate for the time period and for Germany in general. It's too much to share here, but ask her the next time you see her!

Latin phrase - Lady Tullia Tranquilla
Darostur's resident Latin expert (and mundanely a Latin teacher), Tullia very patiently listened to my ideas for mottos and translated/conjugated the various forms of how that would be expressed in proper Latin.  We settles on trying to capture the essence of "It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for" and went from there in translations.  She settled on her favorite being "Necesse est ut silentes spectes"


Unicorn Banner - Don Llewellyn Walsh
This section needs to first be prefaced with terrible unicorn sketches that I did for Thyra in coming up with what the banner sets should look like. Behold!

Graze upon their grace and splendor! (and goat toes)

Llewellyn was talented enough to turn that up there into this beautiful banner below.

Llewellyn and his lady posing with their awesome banner creation.

Motto Banner - Lady Fortune St. Keyne

Fortune came through in perhaps the hottest span of days possible leading up to GNEW to produce the motto banner.  Thyra provided the font for the motto and Fortune wrangled unruly silk, braved WTF humidity, and came through with a lovely piece of work.

Final piece is below, tied onto a borrowed spear in honor of the source document. (Yes that's me carrying the spear).

Photo courtesy of Astrid Sigrun Ulfkelsdottir (mka Jamie Driggers).

Seriously, I cannot thank this team of people enough.  They took some crazy ideas.  Made them appropriate to period, got things done on time, and rocked the hell out of this project.  You are all awesome.

Ramblings - Belly Dancing with an Audience

I went to a Realms (LARP) event over the weekend and took some time to catch up with a friend in between my working in the kitchen for the feast portion of the event.  I talked to him about my disengagement with the Realms community where it seems that I only go to help out rather than play anymore.  He asked if there were things I found interesting in the SCA that I could do in the Realms, so I went down the list of art, cooking, etc until I go to dancing.

SCA - I do both European and Middle Eastern dance.  I may have even flown to Germany with a Duchess to go to a dance event.

Realms - I do European dancing at the Black and White Masquerade (the only event with dancing, we've tried to have more with little success).  I have ZERO interest in belly dancing in the Realms.

I stopped myself after that one and thought about it.  Belly Dance and Middle Eastern dancing in the Realms for me was scary and sends red flags racing through my head.

Let me back up here.  I started belly dance classes two years ago taking lessons from Mistress Anne with no intention of ever dancing in front of an audience.  I took lessons for ballet, tap, and jazz when I was young for a number of years and I do like dancing in general so a convincing argument from a friend who also dances with the group made me show up and give it a shot.  I've since done two public performances;  Bad Raqsan'e Sahra's recital for friends and family and a performance at the Quintavia Hafla.  Neither one of those felt weird or scary or anything.

The group of ladies I dance with (Bad Raqsan'e Sahra) is incredibly supportive, has ladies of all ages and body types, and boasts an almost equal number of children to advanced degrees within the group.  Did I mention they were all lovely?  I mean really lovely as well as being fun, flirty, and even downright ridiculous at times.  I have body image issues as so some of the ladies I dance with, but we joke and fan our selves over the sexiness of our fellow member's solo dances.  I was even convinced to don a pirate hat and send my crew to fetch yonder maiden whom I was swooning over as part of a performance.  There is a sincerity in appreciating of your fellow performer's art within the group.  It's always a fun, family-friendly, and safe environment.

That's the kicker:  safe.  Belly dancing in the Realms to me was always seen as purposefully seductive and slinky, dancing in front of a fire in barely any clothing, and always done in front of a crowd (most always a drunk crowd) of staring and sometimes leering people solely for their amusement.  I've heard the sneering comments of how "hot" or "vastly unattractive" some of the performers were from the patrons of various taverns and event goers.  Being ogled by a bunch of potentially drunk people, some of which I don't even want to be associated with out of game, is not my cup of tea.  It also doesn't help that most of the events that boasted dancing were thinly veiled drunk fests either.  I'm not trying to be a prude, but the thought of dancing in that type of environment gives me anxiety.  So...I don't.

I can thank fully say I've never run into this in the SCA or seem much of this (even at Pennsic, though I've never performed there).

How do as people, not just as a community, be a better audience?  How do we get to a point where our culture in the game (LARPing or otherwise) applauds an honest effort and rewards the desire to perform with appreciation in a safe environment?

Mistress Anne said something very profound.  "The first part of belly dancing is belly acceptance."  At the heaviest weight in my adult life, I found it easy to dance at the Quintavia Hafla for the performance.  There was no judging, but there was support and various fan clubs of people supporting their friends of all the groups.  We need more of that.

Picture by Madame Perronnelle De Croy.