This award was for the son of a friend. This young man is amazingly helpful and always cheerful, and I am proud to call him a friend as well. His persona is Japanese, so truly outside my (admittedly limited) experience. I wanted to find something to strike a chord with him. I asked his mother for some help…favorite colors, persona, spelling of the name, as he hadn’t been officially registered with the SCA at that point, if I recall correctly. I found a Persian pen and ink drawing of a dragon that was just awesome and started there.
So, now what? I had a lovely dragon, but how to create the rest of the scroll? My Laurel-to-be suggested a wash like in traditional Japanese landscapes. I’ve never done ANY watercoloring, let alone a wash. Online videos helped. I used the blue color that the recipient favored and attempted the wash. The color graduation was quite nice. Pergamenata does NOT like water. It buckled and warped like a black hole despite being taped on all 4 sides. Looking back, less water would probably have worked just fine, although it may have been more lined and not blended.
After that, I wanted to keep the feel going with the dragon so I drew smoke from his nostrils, modeling it on the traditional flow of Japanese painting of air currents. I wrote the words within the smoke as emanating from the dragon. His award was the Eurus, named from the Greek god of the East Wind. Smoke/wind/words. All air currents.
Philomene’s Scriptorium 