One thing you should know is that there are different levels of awards given out. A full rundown can be found in the handbook. the TL;DR is I have been working mostly on Award of Arm level awards this was one of the first Grant of Arms I had ever worked on.
Thankfully, the Kingdom Scribe and a dear friend who was not only the former kingdom scribe but also worked on the handbook were able to explain all of the things I needed to have on the scroll and what text I needed to fill in.
Now it was time to go BIG.
I started by mocking everything up on the computer, same as always. When it came time to print, I did have to do some wrangling in the settings, as I only have standard letter-sized prints. Unless I wanted to run to the print shop.
Next the tracing. The text on this was far longer than I had done before and took a fair amount of time to complete. I also had to focus on the illumination as the acanthas leaves can trip me up. I also had a selection of silly birds tucked around and then the helm and mantel.
Once done, I opted to cover the text so I wouldn’t mess it up with the painting. The downside of my one pen is that I use water-based ink. It makes clean-up easy, but if I have any drops, it is ruined. I had leftover trust in the pink paint, so once again, I dove into leaves. I did have to mix additional colors, but a fair amount of the color differences was achieved by diluting my paint and then adding layers as needed
I love this bird! Silly critter faces are my jam and he made me giggle all during the process.
The final product! I did get to see this one awarded, unlike the past few that had gone out.
