KNOTN

In the end....

It had been raining nearly consistently for close to two weeks. As I said on the Moralez Beaumont list, soon I'd be catching Noahs ark to work....

Thursday last week I looked at the Bureau of Meteorology and the forecast was... rain, rain, some more rain and a touch of rain. I had to make a decision that day as we had scadians taking mates from work to the event and it's not a good thing to have argy bargy business going on when you have so many people that are not SCAdians turning up.

I contacted all the seneschals of the north to check in with an ok date. Gabriel suggested one that was already in our calendar which wasn't likely to run so I've used that. 24th of April.....

Does mean that I can get more banners, new stuff for Gabs and hopefully get more people sprucing up their look prior to the event.... after festival.

River Haven's banner

I completed this banner over a week ago now and have been rather slack in getting a photo up for it. Sorry! This banner was slightly more complicated (ok lets call it four times more complicated!) than the Bacchus Woods or St Florian banners which are delightfully simple and quick to paint.... It is rather striking though.


It's done!

Banner up - Second phase

My plan was originally to make pennants of the virtues and *then* make banners for groups, but then I've reprioritised. (Particularly after a frustrating day of dealing with pennants and decided that I just couldn't be bothered). The intention is to now have banners from each of the four groups, as well as four Kingdom banners. I'll put the group banners interspaced between the knight banners, and then Lochac banners on the other side. It will hopefully look impressive.

Don, herald extrodinaire of Stormhold, was kind enough to send me a pic of a period wreath but of course that's at work and not here . Period wreathes appear to be dipicted in the round rather than the way that we do them. You can see this in a few other applications:

C6th Italian Coin ;)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justin_II_siliqua_681331.jpg

Early C16th Italian

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rimini129.jpg

Early C16th Italian

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rimini_-_Tempio_malatestiano_-_Foto_Giovanni_Dall%27Orto,_aprile_2004_07.jpg

Unfortunately, the wreathes in a circular form kinda doesn't work on a rectangular shape when it has another item inside it - so I've used the inspiration of the wreathes to beef it up the laurel wreathes, make them more rounded in shape and to avoid individual leaves. (I like this part because I don't have much time to paint individual leaves on wreathes for 8 banners on both sides....) So they're kinda blended beefy wreathy goodness....

Saturday I spent the day drawing up wreathes of different sizes, making templates of all the various elements of the devices on cardboard (so I use the same templates for the GNW banner project... which I'll start after festival). It's really important to me to have the wreathes as a common link between all the banners because I think those sorts of visual links are important. So the St Florian/River Haven wreathes are the same (above), the Baccus Wood/Willoughbyvale ones are the same (below).

Sunday I managed to paint two banners: St Florian and Bacchus Wood (the simple ones!) And then I got through a quarter of the River Haven one and stuffed it. (boo!) I've just finished Willoughbyvale's tonight.

KNOTN Stage 1 - the other banners - mostly pics

Gabriel de Beaumont - Again the Blue pigment in tintex and permiset is a bit rubbish so I got some permiset paint magic and it's good. Worth the increase in price. No white spirit - so that's good too. Used a silver nikko for the wing accents.

Here's Lorcan of River Haven - bit of shading to make it a bit more interesting

Draco of Yorvich - I think his device is striking.

Sebastian of Ventbarre - I think I could do his device in my sleep....

Somerled of Redcliffe

Leofric Willoughbye de Broke - Bit of shading to make it a little more interesting. Really annoyed that I wasn't paying attention when I was drawing it up to have the fur even. Oh well. It's done.

KNOTN Stage I Agro's Banner

Agro's banner is not the best example of medieval heraldry on the block, and he prefers to not depict it that way... It is what it is, an I'm rather fond of the bloke so it's not so bad. Though I must admit the green did burn through my retnas. :)

The first hurdle. Actually, let's be honest it. Let's call it the second hurdle. The second hurdle was this green paint. This is the tintex brand (though permiset is no better in this grade). There is insufficient pigment between the blue (which is rubbish) and the yellow to make green. So the result is this dreadful primary school level of painting. Really quite rubbish.


I gnashed my teeth, and then I punched the sky. Then I sent Gabriel in for some different paint. And this time he got Permiset Fabric Magic - which is an opaque paint and twice the price. And for this we got a complete cover, and burnt retnas.

Hurray!!! The next hurdle of course was opening up the white paint to discover that it had turned into jelly - ew!

Nothing like a barmix to make it come back to life - just pulsate and hey presto! Paint! All good!

And here he is, bless his heart, Agro's turtle... (Raph?)

KNOTN Stage I Rufus's Banner

Rufus has a Catamount in the chief of his device. What's a catamount? Well that's a good question. It's supposed to be a celtic dog... which looks like a cat. This is when you add all the appropriate irish jokes here and smile politely I suppose.... But anyway - Rufus's tabard has a lovely cat...a.. mount on the skirt who's tail ties into the lovely knot that is in the main part of his device. Nice combination of elements for his tabard. Of course I wanted to mimic this as much as possible on the banner because he did such a good job of it.

Here's a pic of the catamount on his tabard. (Yes, it probably could do with a wash....)



I was really lucky to find that the height of the part of his tabard was the same (slightly larger) than the chief on the banner so that means transferring the pattern was just about copying rather than enlarging. This is how I went about it - fairly simple really.



I used some wax free baking paper and just simply traced with a pencil.



I then glued it onto a manila folder and cut it out




And then used the cardboard cut out to draw the outline onto the banner. I folded in half to get the middle. I used a pin to make holes so I could use my favourite disolvable pen to draw the internal design for painting.

And here is the final result.

Knights of the North Progress - Stage 1

Knights of the North - Stage 1
It's traditional that we celebrate the knights who reside every year in Qld a few weeks prior to festival. We currently have 9 knights, alas not all of them are active, and we have made others that have moved away, but this is about who is here. So those 9 knights are: Agro, Sebastian, Leofric, Bain, Draco, Gabriel, Somerlid, Lorcan, Rufus.

The cutting measurements for these banners has been 75cm by 100cms. I have used 180 wide bleached calico so I can use the excess 30 cms to make pennants with a Kingdom badge and virtues listed on them. (That's stage 2). I'm using up old permiset paint which unfortunately has white spirit which is not very nice for breathing. I'm replacing the paints with tintex - which is a fabric paint that doesn't contain white spirit and is made here in Brisbane. So double win really.

So far I'm just over half way which is pretty good. I've completed Sebastian, Leofric, Draco's Sommerlids and Lorcan. I'm most of the way through Rufus's banner as he's got a cool charge in the chief that I need to get right, Bain's I'm half way through (see below). Agro's is unfortunately green - which is normally not a problem however the green paint is really quite low on pigment which means that it looks like a primary school edition of heraldry. Boo So - hopefully I'll be able to send Gabriel down to the art shop and find me some opaque fabric paint. I haven't started Gabriel's banner. Probaly because I've done it so many times I'm a bit bored with the design ;)

Ok - so here's a build up of Bain's banner.




So the basic colours are there. Basically I did the leaves first, allowed it to dry, the the border, and the red. This banner needs a bit of sparkle, so I'll add gold for the internal part of the rose, and it also is supposed to have a semi of gout. (Raindrops on roses... whiskers on kittens etc)






Ok - I've used a perminant marker for the edging just to sharpen it up. I could have spent ages doing it with paint but I'm on a deadline. The gout is drawn on a diamond pattern. I have hard cardboard pieces of about 120 long which are cut out in various widths which I use for bias binding. I've used this to give me the necessary spacing.



To mark I've used the above blue pen which you can purchase at spotlight. It's water soluable so that means I can lightly spray the banner with water (when it's finished drying) and the colour will disappear. Bonus really. And there will be more of this action on Tuesday.

Service points - Knights of the North plan tm.

My current big project is Knights of the North passe d'armes which will be the first saturday in March 2010. I want to raise the spectacle and heraldic display because it's been going for years but just hasn't satisfied my visual needs. (And it's all about my visual needs) To do this I'll be looking at a few things that need upgrading for the Barony equipmentwise:

• 9 x tennans banners
• St Florian replacement banners (ours have gone missing since GNW - which means they're probably safe in someone's garage .... which means they're inaccessible)
• Kingdom Banners
• Pennants of virtues
• Finding out how many Banner poles/portable holes we have
• Arranging the creation of new passe d'armes equipment - tree, shields, barrier, spare weapons
• New tabards/baldrics for officers (specifically for heralds/marshals)

This means I'll look at doing a budget proposal for two things

1. Replacement assets proposal (separate to the event budget) to use the equipment levy that is charged at every event
2. Event proposal - which will include a separate costs for afternoon tea which allow for a cooks guild table or some such. This will allow for low cost for anyone who doesn't want to eat the food (which affects fighters mostly)

Considering how hot it is ... well it's bloody hot today, I'll look at running the event in the afternoon - so that could possibly mean armour inspection for 2:30 with toys on at 3pm. This will allow two and a half hours of play time.

We currently have two sunshades (Baronial) and at least one of ours. (And I have more canvas to make more if required.

I haven't arranged any officers yet or someone to manage the cooks guild table but this can be managed at the Baronial meeting or shortly afterwards.

I have, however, painted half of most of the banners for the event which is good. I would be downstairs painting tonight however it's been 37 degrees today so it's an upstairs kinda night frankly. I'm using up my old toxic stinky paint and replacing it with non stinky paint which is great. Some of that stuff is really stinky!!!

So once I have sign off I'll be able to do up the advertising, send it to pegasus and to seneschals for distribution.

I also want to see if I can encourage heraldic display from the combatants and non coms at the event. Could be a heap of fun! Yay for A&S starting this Friday!!!