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Award Type:              OBT - Order of the Burdened Tyger
Recipient's Name:    Olga Kaf'Skaia
Where Given:           Love, Elizabethan Style (Bardic Champions), Caer Adamant
Date:                         Feb 10, AS 35 (2001)
 

Scroll By:                      Kayleigh McWhyte

Calligraphy:              Uncial (Drogin)
Resources:               Inspired by the ceiling of the Alhambra (Royal Palace of Ferdinand and Isabella), Segovia, Spain
Scroll Size:               10" x 8"
Materials Used:        W&N gouache on Arches hot press 140#, Cottman watercolors, faux leaf and testor's gold enamel,
                                    W&N gold ink.
Tools Used:            2H pencil, Speedball C-5 dip pen, Staedtler technical pens, Compass, ruler, t-square.

Additional Comments:    8th scroll. Background on the recipient did not include reference to what her persona's "nationality" was, and when I asked around, someone ventured that it was a Norse-Arabian name (gone a-Crusadin'). Hence the mixture of the two styles - Celtic and Middle Eastern - which is generally a no-no in scribal terms, as I would later hear discussed across various lines. As I would later hear it, Olga's surname is Russian, and having tasted some of the food she's cooked at the Coronation of Andreas 2 and Isabella 2, this award was well deserved, repeatedly.

Am I satisfied with this piece? No. Why?
I went through a prior piece just before this, and managed to mess up the "lattice" work, which was done in soft silver over blue (I still have it sitting in my bookshelf as a reminder of my boo-boos). It still did not resemble what it was supposed to look like, and having been to the Alcazar myself, as part of a high school exchange trip to Spain in 1990, I was blown away by some of the ornate architecture inside. What struck me most there was the gothic style calligraphy carved into the trim atop the walls in the throne room, written in Spanish, about Ferdinand and Isabella. Trying to read gothic is one thing. Trying to read it *and translate it* in your head into English took real effort.

I suspect the same difficulty somehow transferred itself in trying to express the image of the ceiling onto the paper. Likewise, again, I was still in 'fear factor' mode on gilding, and do not consider this piece anything other than "a learning experience".