Silver Crescent - Edward

This was my first live scroll and sadly the one that almost made me abandon hope of becoming a scribe in the SCA.  I'm not going to go into the details of the bad, but instead focus on the good on this.  It ended up being a labor of love from four people and was highly personalized to the recipient.  It's still hands down one of my favorite scrolls that I've done.

Constance asked me to do the illumination for Edward Grey of Lochleven's Silver Crescent scroll.  My first reaction was OMG!!!! YEAY!!  I've known Edward since the fall of 2002 when I was in my senior year of college and met him through mutual friends in the Realms LARP.  To me, he was always the ridiculously tall guy who was incredibly kind and incredibly pun-tastic.  Fast forward to my joining the SCA, realizing I know way more people than I thought, joining Lochleven's sister household of Darostur, etc, etc...long story short:  Edward was a dear friend and I was honored to be able to do the illumination on the scroll.

Scroll assignment: Order of the Silver Crescent
Recipient: Edward Grey of Lochleven
Hand: Gothic Littera Bastarda by Constance de St. Denis
Words: Thyra Eiriksdottir, latin translation for the tiny banner by Eva Woderose
Specs: Guache on Bristol
Source: Gorleston Psalter, England (Suffolk), 1310-1324, Add MS 49622, f. 193v.  

The illumination is done completely free-hand.  Sketching was done before the calligrpahy and finished all painting afterward.  Thyra and Eva added the personalized banner detail at the bottom.  I changed out the bird detail on the border for Edward's greyhound.

I remembered to take a LOT of progress pictures for this one.

Hound detail.  The circle will become the Silver Crescent drawing.

Snail!

Tiny Edward gets sketched in.

And done!

The big take away for this piece was that I needed to be more consistent when mixing paint which will alleviate brush stroke visibility.  Tiny Edward and the snail are my favorite parts of this piece.  When researching the vague time period his persona is from, this bit of marginalia jumped out at me.
Bonus points if you can read the latin banner! :)