By the Royal Command of Balfar et Luna, Rex et Regina Orientales,
Conn MacSainrith mhic Bhranain, in recognition of his service in
organizing the Canton of Ynys y Gwaed, in the Barony of Ruantallan, is
hereby awarded these Arms, to be borne without let or hindrance:
Done by Our Hands in the Barony of Ruantallan this XXVth day of
November, Anno Societatis XXX.
I chose to pattern this scroll after a page from the Book of Kells,
one which I
have used twice before, in different ways
(see Brianna Ariella Durand
and Cadfael ap Madoc ap
Dafydd).
I took a layout class at
Pennsic this year, where the instructor pointed out that, in Kells,
most pages have either illumination or text; she suggested that one
could do a scroll with illumination on the left and the text on the
right. I considered this, but nearly all the illuminated pages in my
abridged copy of Kells were far too complicated. One, though,
grabbed my imagination, as it has before. It is
page 124R, part of
the crucifixion story from the Gospel of Matthew; some of the text
forms an X (perhaps to represent the cross?), and the border is
indented to form spaces with people looking on. As you can see, I
adapted this layout. The text forming the X is "Balfar et
Luna, Rex et Regina"; I'm pleased with the way it winds up emphasizing
the Crown (and the parallelism between the upper and lower parts of
the X), though I can't really take credit for it, as it just happened
to turn out that way. I replaced the anonymous onlookers in the
margins with Balfar and Luna (loosely copied from their picture in
this year's Pennsic book).
Construction notes
- The two pages are, unfortunately, on two separate pieces of paper.
This came about because, originally, I forgot to leave space in the
text for the blazon to be filled in later. So, rather than redo the
entire scroll, I redid the right-hand page and placed the two pages
together in this mat (to make sure they wouldn't get separated on
their way to Lord Conn).
- Dates: August 17th to September 15th, A.S. XXXV. My thirteenth
scroll.
- Paper: Aquarelle Arches Hot Press, 14"x20".
- Margins: 2.5" on left and right; 2" on top; 4" on bottom; 3"
gutter between pages.
- Ink: Winsor & Newton Black Indian Ink
- Nibs: All are Brause nibs. Capital: 3mm. Left page: 1.5 mm.
Right page: 1mm. (I originally did the right page at the
same nib size as the left; but I had to make it smaller to make room
for the blank lines for the blazon to be filled in later.)
- Colors
- All are gouaches; most are Winsor & Newton Designer's
Gouache.
- Borders and rubrication:
- Golden (Caran d'Ache)
- Spectrum Red
- Mistletoe Green
- Sky Blue
- Balfar & Luna:
- For these, I more or less had to guess, since the Pennsic
picture was in black and white, and I have never seen Balfar
and Luna. Fortunately, when I looked up their heraldry, it was
clear that the clothing they were wearing was based on their
arms. Baroness Mairi, who had done the Pennsic book,
confirmed that they usually wore their heraldic colors. The
eye color, though, is a complete fiction.
- Skin: Flesh Tint (lightened with Permanent White for Luna)
- Purple parts of clothes: ~1:1 Spectrum Purple : Permanent White
- Crowns, yellow stripes in Balfar's clothing: Golden (Caran d'Ache)
- Whites of eyes, Balfar's owls: Permanent White
- Irises of eyes: ~1:1 Sky Blue: Permanent White
- Balfar's hair: Raw Sienna
- Luna's hair: Golden (Caran d'Ache), lightened a bit with
Permanent White