The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The 'Finished' Scroll.

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The 'Finished' Scroll.
At this point the Great Espionage Work began. Careful study of the photograph of Johann showed that some of the harp strings were colored. It was hard to make out what color and which ones, however, so I got on the phone to my sister (Johann's wife) and asked her if she could find out. She supplied me with the information re the coloring scheme of the harp strings. From right to left there's a red string, followed by two white strings, followed by a blue string, followed by three white strings; repeat. How many strings? Depends on the harp. Does it matter? Depends on the harp. "Kara, you've got to get me the number of harp strings -- if it's not right, it'll bug Johann." "Okay, I'll see if I can find out." So she found out and dutifully reported the number of harp strings on that particular harp (which was one that Johann had made and then sold, so it wasn't sitting around the house to be looked at, yet Kara got the info!), which turns out to be twenty-two.

Now is the hard part -- the portrait. I like to work from a color photograph of a subject, and in this case all I had was the scanned replica on the web site. I was further hampered by the fact that I didn't have a color printer -- a friend had supplied me with color print-outs of the tents but I didn't have one of the subject. I actually put the image up on my computer's desktop so it filled the entire monitor. This brought up some detail but not as much as I would have liked, but I told myself that I could do it. This turned out to be the most challenging portrait I had ever done. The worst part was the eyes, followed by the mouth area, followed by the blonde hair. Do you know that blonde is the hardest hair color to paint? It sure is. It's not yellow. It's not brown. It's not dark. It's not light. It's blonde. Disgusting, revolting, dishwater blonde. I now loathe blonde people. They should all be shot and never have their portraits painted. But I digress ...

-- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).