I'd wanted to try calligraphy and make a scroll for someone. I attended an event where somebody was giving instruction on how to make a scroll blank. They were asking for volunteers to create scroll blanks which were to be given to the crown as gifts. I chose to do a free hand style Celtic knot work type scroll. I’m not really happy with the way it came out, but it was only my first attempt. As the scroll was to be gifted from the Barony of Ayerton I chose to embed 5 six pointed stars as is found on the Barony’s heraldry. I also chose to do the Celtic snakes in blue and green as those are they barony’s colors.
Here are some photos of the process.
I chose to use snakes in the scroll as earlier in the day a snake was found in the port-a-john at the event. It seemed appropriate. I flipped through some books which had sample celtic animals. I chose to make one snake with long curly "ears" and one without. This was to basically symbolize that one was perhaps male and one female. The design was OK in concept, but I'm still not very happy with the result.
Here are the preliminary sketches.
Here is the first pass with color. You can see some preliminary shading around the knotwork. After this layer dried I put one more layer of color to blend better and then a final layer of highlights. As I took all these pics with my phone, in the shade, they didn't come out very clear.
Here is the finished blank.
