They See Me Scrollin' (Part II)

o, 'm still absolutely in love with painting scrolls (as I believe I mentioned), and I've been enjoying the heck out of learning about the art of illumination.   I'm picking up some more blank charters next Tuesday from one of our scribes, to paint and turn back in.  Medieval coloring for grownups.  Love it.  :)

Meanwhile, the original scroll competition that I mentioned is...tomorrow!  Eek!  I've been done with mine for about a week; and the longer I wait and think about it, the more nervous I am.  I don't know why I should be - I'm a beginner, and it's not like people won't understand that.  

My calligraphy basically sucks - but I've only been doing this a month, so, I'll get better.  Theoretically. (Honestly, I had no idea calligraphy involved quite so much cussing and ripping up pages and throwing pencils).   But in the meantime, I really love drawing these designs - I've been sketching out a bunch this week for practice, and to get ideas flowing.  

Here's the actual contest entry, uncolored so that it can be copied if it's one of the ones chosen to be used, as requested.  (The line and weird smushing effect in the center is because the page was too large for my scanner, and I had to scan each half and then put them together on the computer; sorry about that).

Tada.

And here's a colored example - on which the calligraphy is out of alignment, misspelled in a couple of places, and outside the text box in places.  Fail!  But I'm including as an example of the coloring, which is suggested though not mandatory for the entry.  And because I think it's pretty all colored in. :)

Inspiration piece.  I heart this.  And I got to learn quite a bit about Uttrecht illumination in the process, which is, I think, probably the thing that interests me the most about all of this.  (Not this specific style, but the "art history" aspect).











I have no illusions about even placing in this contest - I know I won't - but I'm excited at the prospect of entering anyway, just for the fun of it, the experience, the travel opportunity (the event is 2.5 hours away), and the chance to see some folks from the area who I haven't seen in months.  And the fact that I'm travelling with a good friend of mine, who's also been working on a scroll for this competition - I've had so much fun talking with her about all of it (and, as usual, she has some books on the subject I envy so much!  Hee).

Anyway, I'm off to go make a couple corrections to my documentation page and get it printed up for the trip tomorrow.

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