Imperfectly Period

Some calligraphy I did recently with English transliterated into Cyrillic. Art is by another scribe.

    These are my favourite eyeglasses because you can tell that they were forgotten inside this book (a collection of sermons by St. Augustin), which is just so human and something I would absolutely do if my glasses were so flat.   Apologies for the blurriness as I was quite tired at this point and frantically taking photos as fast as I could through the glass display cases, but you can see their magnification strength in the photo above.     Both the glasses and the book are in the Musée de Cluny .

  My first attempt at Old Icelandic based on Ævidrápa  for a baronial long-term service award. The design is based on an extant raven brooch. Listen all and I will boast of a friend to all. It is too late to deny one fine fellow [lit. beautiful boy], he-bear Beorn Bjulfrsson, he begs nothing but gives without expectation of reward [lit. much money]. This March 21 AS 60 [I used Roman numerals], giving Vémundr and sea-ward standing Hallveig, Baron and Baroness of the land girt by/with the whale road, confer upon him the title of noble Seagull. Hlyði allit en ek Berkeley ór allt fólk langvinr.  Frá vinum mínum einn snyrtidreng, bersi Beorn Bulfrsson; hann beiðr neinn nema gefr án vænting féván mikil. At Einmánaðr XXI vér, veita Vémundr ok hafleið Hallveig, Barún ok Barúnfrú ór lands gjörd með halvrr vegr herra horskliger mávar.

      It's a bit hard to tell, but the peacock eyes are all over-painted with iridescent paints.

    I helped at our barony's demo booth at a local faerie fair (think small fantasy themed Ren fair) and naturally spent most of the time painting charters.  The techniques were pretty simple, but I found it surprising and perhaps a little sad that many people found it fascinating.  I was puzzled on their reactions until a friend explained that many people stopped creating art of any kind after leaving school. People should be less afraid of sucking at something before getting good at it.  I'm still not there yet, but I'm not bad, either.

I attempted trompe l'oiel - or, as I like to call it, "squashed bug" - for my Daffodil in Any Medium entry this year.  It's hard to tell, but gold is used for the bark texture and highlights on the flowers.  The pearls also have a touch of shimmer to them. Two very different exemplars were used to try and create the effect of a painting of a daffodil. The most impressive part is that I'd spent the rest of the week making the 3 championship warrants for the event and only started my entry a day and a half before the competition.  The winner this year was Baron Aristophanes who distilled freaking daffodil whiskey because of course he did!