Phoenix Feathers

I spent most of today working on a large arts and science project for the 2013 winter art sci competition in January. I've got all my pieces nearly drawn and need to gild and paint now, which was an accomplishment. The slightly larger accomplishment was likely shuffling the entire paper into a semblance of order. It's at 32 pages at the moment and likely close to 40 by the time I've added in the last few bits of process and pigment explanation.  I'm entering this at master work level which is... slightly... terrifying. However, I think I'm at the point where I simply need to just commit to it, leap off the cliff, and see how it goes. My brain is absolute mush tonight, but it's a happy mush, full of learning and art and affection from friends and family. I can think of no other way to spend Christmas.

I've added an A&S fifty challenge page to my blog to provide an annotated list of the books I'm reading for the A&S fifty challenge. I'm trying to deepen my research by actually READING all these scribal and persona books this time.  So far I've four of them listed. 46 to go! It's a good thing I read even faster than I scribe.  You can check out the list at the top of my blog page on the new tab.

I recently finished a new scroll for kingdom use based on the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry - it's a horoscope page with some modifications for scroll use. There's about fifteen hours of work in this one, give or take. The most interesting part was those itty bitty horoscope signs in the border. This was an interesting shape to work in for the calligraphy and required a bit of planning to get the text in properly and to fit. There's also a rather crazy amount of gilding involved, though that was, ironically, one of the easier steps. I modified the background of the border a bit as it was originally gilded, however I wanted more contrast and to cut back on the amount of gold leaf required and so I filled in the "background" of the border with gold gouache. This one will be submitted to kingdom for use for a Triskele as a GoA level award. In other news, scribal cat is scribal. This is one of my kittens, Shakespeare, who has decided to become involved in the

My week (or the last two) have been mostly filled with work flailing and a great deal of small projects that were around the house and needed to get done, but very little painting time. I was almost done on a batch of AoA level scroll blanks that were going into a gift basket until Saturday morning when, upon pouring my coffee I cleverly managed to trip, spill coffee on my hand, and send coffee droplets sailing fourteen feet across the kitchen to where the scroll was sitting patiently on a table waiting for me. Could it at least fall on a nice unpainted area I still had to complete? Nope. Smack dab in the middle of the calligraphy area. I swear, some days, just to make up for how easy an occasional project is or the days my muse is quietly smothering my brain in glitter and joy, that damned little demon is just hanging out waiting for me the rest of them. In that vein, tonight, I shall attempt to appease the demon, felt the little bugger, stick him in a cage, and put him in my studio -

Can be seen at: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112735004436194670657/albums/5647757165271617473 For scribal work https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112735004436194670657/albums/5633790601956822977 For masks https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112735004436194670657/albums/5633791339511269729 For dolls and sculpture https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112735004436194670657/albums/5633802956264687217 For small squishy felt things

I'll be doing more blog work of pieces here and cross posting to FB and G+ to try and keep a bit of a better record of both scribal and other artistic endeavors. More soon - I've got a bunch of photos to take this weekend!