A&S50 #6: Device of Alexander Adelbrecht von Markelingen [In Progress]

I received a lot of great feedback from Moll at Pennsic after she looked over a few of my pieces. One was that I need to use matting more and rely less on my tracing paint. I wanted to practice more, so I referred to a file I keep with close friends' devices and badges. My SCA-nephew Alexander's device was perfectly suited for this:

I laid down some matting paint in the chief and in the center, and cut down a cheap brush to use as a scrub. I scrubbed the antler out of the chief and fixed the shape of the heart, then took this photo.

Before firing it, I continued to clean up the shape of the heart, the erminois spots, and the final point of the antler. I fired it and was going to let that be the end of this one, until a few days later. I am working on learning and designing decorative techniques to go around glass heraldry. The idea occurred to me to surround it with glass, give those pieces a brown matt, and scrub out ermine spots as diapering. I think this one will develop further into a more complete panel.

This also came from the thickest batch of paint I've mixed yet. I think I added too much gum arabic, as this clings powerfully. I remember a twitch in my wrist while sprinkling on the gum, and thought I'd let it go and see how it ended up. It's functional, but a little difficult. The "freshly fallen snow" amount was more like "freak snow storm" in this case.

Another thing I noticed is that the scrubs I use, hog bristle, tend to leave thin lines behind in the removed area. A second pass easily removes them, but I find the look very appealing. It reminds me of woodcarvings and prints made by hand. It's a rare example of a time when I prefer an imperfection. I don't know how much of that I can get away for A&S or commercial standards, but I like it. I decided to leave some of the marks visible in the antler on this piece as a result.