The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The red field on the arms is painted first -- the color composition will key off it. The face was painted next, then the chain mail. The cloak is painted with ultramarine and Prussian Blue. Helmet and cloak clasp have a bit of work done.

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

To Arms

"With the Mistress of Copper Mountain all dolled up, next came the Russian foot soldier. I had no idea what colors I was going to dress him in as I wanted to see how the female figure turned out first. One thing was set -- the shield was to be red and silver, so I painted the field of the shield with the same Spectrum Red as was used in the lining of the Malachite Queen's robe.

"The man's face was painted first. The flesh tones were made with more orange than those used on the Queen, to give him a ruddy look in contrast to her pale skin.

"The chain mail was rendered next. It was more time consuming than I'd thought, mostly because despite the fact that I know any number of people in the SCA who wear chain mail, it turned out that I'd taken very few pictures of them, and I needed to look at a chain mail shirt so I could depict one realistically. It some time before I turned up enough photos and drawings of people in chain mail to get a good enough feel for the subject. Dark gray lines were laid down to make the base pattern of the mail, following the lines of the man's body underneath and using perspective to form the curved shapes. Once the base lines were down, the "mail" was made by painting a close series of crescent marks in a lighter gray between the dark gray lines. All of the marks went the same direction. Next, dark gray crescent shapes were made over the dark lines, going the opposite direction and linking the center of the top crescent with the center of the crescent below the dark gray crescent. The chain mail shirt (a form of "bakhterets", which was a mixture of mail -- "kol'chuga" -- and plates, or "pantsir") was painted first, then the chain mail scarf ("barmitsa") which attached to the bottom of the helmet ("kolpak"), which was painted last. More work was done on all of this simulated metal later. The central stone of the cloak clasp was painted in -- as malachite, what else? The flanking stones would be done later when I figured out what color I wanted to use.

"Work is in progress here on the mantle ("korzna") with its tablion. The pattern is the Novgorod Cross pattern, because it was geometric and therefore an easier pattern to do. The pattern of the cloak fabric had to do two things -- it had to reflect the shapes beneath it, and it had to obey the rules of perspective. The Novgorod Cross pattern is basically nothing more than a grid of squares, and the lines of the grid had to curve over and into folds, while curving around the man's body so narrow as it wrapped away from the viewer. The grid was sketched in with a pencil over the white under painting, then the pattern was painted in two shades of blue -- Ultramarine Blue, and Prussian Blue. All of the light blue crosses and squares had been done and the Prussian blue part of the pattern was partially painted in this photo." -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

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