Matija Potocnik – OSR – Scrawlings an Sccreccain

While I”m happy to do another scroll for Matija, this one came with mixed emotions. Not towards him, but to a student sibling. a week or so ago, I turned down the opportunity to do a scroll for her as I didn”t think I would have time before investiture. The assignment came in 2 weeks before the due date. After reading it I lamented to my wife over it about my mixed feelings and concern towards helping prep for investiture AND getting this scroll done in time. She put me at ease and told me to go ahead and dive in.

And dive in I did. First thing I did to alleviate some of the stress was reach out to Grim for words. Being truly awesome bard, he accepted which left me with Illumination and Calligraphy. Those are tasks I can handle on short notice.

For Illumination I ~~stupidly~~ decided now would be a perfect time to try my hand and White Vine. Clearly, it”s the best choice for a late period Italian persona! It was an emotional roller coaster. It was turning out well, but the weaving was driving me mad, as was maintaining a vine-like look. I loved and hated it so much. Why do I love and hate it so much? It”s gorgeous and looks a lot like knotwork, BUT knotwork doesn”t branch off of itself. Mathematically, knotwork will create the correct patterns of over/under as needed. White vine, branches. It”s over/under isn”t as rhythmic. You will end up with double overs or double unders at some point! A fact that I will have to learn to accept. In the meantime, I”m just going to make sure my vines look like vines.

I guess spending 20-ish years drawing knotwork will pay off in decent looking white vine?

I had originally planned on a large illumined capital, but as the text was going to be largely poetry, divided into two columns, the capital would really mess with the horizontal line space. Then I found out that Grim was planning on a poem, or two. The large Illuminated capital REALLY messes with the layout and formatting of poems and sonnets. It causes the first or first couple of lines (depending on style) to be bumped over. With wrapping text it doesn”t matter, it wraps. Poetry tends to be fixed in line length (rhyming and all that jazz), so I really can”t wrap a line without breaking the flow of the words. To compensate for this, I ramped up the amount of flash and shine in the rest of the illumination.

It”s okay. It”s a “based on” not an exact copy. Don”t beat yourself up over it. You should be happy with it.
– Fiona O”Maille o chaun coille, my Laurel

So I was happily working on the scroll. Finished up the gold, silver, and other colors. On to the white-work! The printout I have is really blurry and the original image on my computer isn”t much better, but they look like little pluses, so little pluses it is. I get about halfway through and think “This doesn”t look quite right”, and then I find this image. A nice high-res scan of the bottom of the page. They weren”t blurry plusses, they were groups of three white dots. Thus I was reminded of what of my very first classes on Illumination, “Learn to Love the Dot”

Words

I pose a problem of the martial sort
What token can be made to outward show
One’s martial prowess with a rapier, so
Matija Potocnik is called to court.
For he’s a deadly duelist I purport
He deftly sets his rapiers high and low
Controls his range and fast runs through hisfoe
In rapier list, in field, or doughty fort

There’s but one way to see our problem solved
Thus König Willhelm and Königin Vienna say
Matija Potocnik today will join
The Order of the Silver Rapier, resolved
By our hand this Feast of Ivo’s Day
In A.S. fifty-three at Ceilidh of Bjorn
Grimm the Skald

The words by Grimm were, as usual, awesome. I tried with the 1.5mm nib and found that the long lines would need to be wrapped, this wouldn”t do for a proper poem. Which is a shame because it would have filled the space nicely. So, 1mm nib it was to be, again (at least it wasn”t the .5mm). This did, however, grant me the opportunity to put in the illuminated capital, back where I had originally planned even! After some fiddling, I came up with something I liked.

This scroll turned out much better than I thought it would giving everything that”s been going on. I”m happy with it to say the least. I can”t wait for it to go out and to see Matt”s reaction. He totally deserves it.