This is the Albion of Mistress Eleanora von Ratzeburg better known as Ele. I seem to to a lot of scrolls for Ele but that's because we are friends so usually I get asked first which is one of the nice things about being a Kingdom like this, most of the time if the signet knows beforehand they will ask friends of the recipient first.
This scroll took me years to complete. There's no particular reason why it just did. The assignment was already a backlog when I got it and then it took me forever to find a design I liked that I had not already done before and then it took me ages to draw it out. After that it sat for a while until I did the gold and blocked out the major colours, then it sat some more until I finished it. Over all I think around 3 years give or take.It felt like forever but when I chatted with Ele about it she was cool. She knows me well enough to know that sometimes it's better to let me take my time and allow my skills to catch up with my thoughts on the scroll at hand.
This is a process I've gotten used to. I seem to go through growth spurts as a scribe where I let a project sit for a long time before I'm ready to execute what it is I have in my head. I rarely start a scroll without knowing what it will look like when it's done. It's a weird sort of pre viz I guess and it's the reason I so rarely sketch anything out as an idea. I do a lot of mental sketching. Something that drove many of my art teachers to distraction at NSCAD. It's hard to show someone your thought process when it stays in your head.
This piece is watercolour and gouache on fabriano paper, with 23kt gold leaf and oak.gall ink. It's roughly A4 in size.
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