The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

The Pelican symbol was finished. Border comes next.

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

Half-Way There

"The Pelican badge in the top middle of the border was painted next. This was fairly simple, being predominately grays -- lighter grays on the top part of the bird, dark grays towards the nestlings, which were painted in the lighter grays to set them off from their mother. There isn't any unadulterated white on the pelican with the exception of the tiny white dot to make the reflection mark off the black pupil of the eye. The "straw" of the woven gilded nest was worked over with a lot of yellow ochre, darkened with violet for the shadows.

"Well, that was the fun part. Now came the more tedious part -- painting the border. I knew by this time that the golden border was going to have to be under painted with white, which meant everything was going to have to be painted twice. Sigh. ("We do this to serve," I muttered, rolling up my sleeves. "Dang Pelicans, anyway.")

"Back while I was still painting the calligraphy, Lorenzo himself called to say he had finished some jewelry which I had commissioned. I went over to his place to pick them up and we sat talking in his pleasant little garden for a time. I noticed that he had a good lion motif working -- in fact, he had lions almost everywhere throughout his place. "I just love lions," he said, and I sat there thinking, "Dang -- and there's not a single lion in my design, too bad." -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

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