My heraldry progress

[Sir Edward]

I've been trying to draw up the dragon part of my heraldry. This is just a rough draft, I already see lots of spots that need major tweaking, but what do you think so far?



I'm aiming for a "dragon couchant", which means seated with all four limbs (laying down essentially), with head raised and alert, and tail curled under.

[Das Bill]

As a modern piece, I think it looks great. If you are going for something more medieval, though, the head looks a little strange to me. It reminds me more of a modern fantasty dragon than a historical fantasy dragon, if that makes any sense.

A lot of medieval dragon's have a somewhat bird/dog like look to the face, kind of like a rooster with somewhat of a nose. There's a lot of variation, of course, and I'm sure you can probably find images that look along the lines of your heraldry here, but there's something "off" about it to me, coming from a medievalesque stand point.

Here's an example to show what I mean:
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast262.htm

[Sir Edward]

Yep, you're absolutely right. The head is one of the parts that I'm still working on. Right now it looks like a big watermelon to me. I haven't completely decided if I'm going more historically correct or more modern. I'm already fudging it a little by having the "crux ansata" in in the CoA. Here's the design so far:



And the full explanation I've written up:

http://ed.toton.org/chivalry/my-coa.html

[Das Bill]

Hey, that looks great! I also very much liked the description behind the symbolism.

By the way, I forgot the mention that I really like the "dragon couchant" idea. It reminds me of many of the 14th century funeries with the dogs watching at their masters' feet.

[Sir Edward]

Thanks, glad you like it.  

The graphic that I have for the dragon on the shield design is one I found online, turned blue, and pasted in. I started using it as a placeholder before I had decided what position I wanted the dragon to be in, and the more I looked at it and thought about it, the more I liked the "couchant" position. I see it much as you do... at rest, but vigilant. A lot of the time you see arms done with the beasts having a "rampant" or "passant", but there are many more options of course.

I found a nice description of beast positions (though I hate the annoying pop-up ads):

http://dragon_azure.tripod.com/UoA/AnimalBlazonry.html

According to this page mine has a mistake in that I'm leaving the tail pointed forward instead of up behind the back. But I don't care.

[Sir Wolf]

  ahhhhhhhhhhh its the chathulu heraldry

very impressive sir Edward. very nice indeed.

[Sir Edward]

Well, I have a dragon that might work for the crest. Sir Brian suggested it to me, and it got here yesterday.

I don't have anything ready for mounting it... I'll probably try to attach it to a piece of plywood, paint it up in my colors, and mount it with the fabric mantle hiding the plywood base. We'll see how it works out.


(click for zoom)

[Sir Brian]

Wow! That did work out quite well didn't? Just the right size and
with a great posture.

Rosemary helped me put the finishing touches on the ends of my torse.
I wanted to do something about hiding the knots that kept the two pieces
of the torse joined.

What do you all think?

[Sir Edward]

That looks pretty good. It looks like you have some gold edging on those pieces, that's a nice accent. I've been trying to think about what to do with mine when I get to that stage too. I like the idea of having "tails" of some kind, and I may try to make the mantle hang down a good ways too.

Can't wait to wow the crowds at faire this year.

[Sir Brian]

I used some of the leftover material that I made the torse with and wanted a ragged edge or frayed
appearance on the edges, thing is that particular material frays very easily but doesn't STOP fraying!
 
So I used gold metallic thread to hopefully stop if from fraying too much.

Oh and here is a link for you.
http://www.decalpaper.com/

Why do you need decal paper you ask? - For your Ailettes of course! You can't just have them
painted you know! They were small replicas of the CoA, including the charges! 

~ Ah the devil is in the details!

[Sir Edward]

Decal paper! Oh crap, now I need a color printer...

Well, I'm still tweaking the dragon design. Cleaned up some of the lines, adjusted some curves, stretched the wings back more, and shaped the head a little. Looks like I'm going for more of a modern fantasy dragon.



Showing both stages for comparison.

And this is a vector design, so I'll be able to scale it as much as I want and print it out to make stencils etc.

EDIT: Added another minor revision. Adjusted the back/collarbone area, raised the shoulder, tweaked the wings, smoothed the curvature of the tail loop.

[Sir Brian]

Oh yeah! You are really getting it now. That looks great!

EDIT:

When you get the decal paper (and the color printer ), make
sure you pickup some "SolvaSet" at practically any hobby shop.
It's about $3.00 for a 2oz bottle, which is far more than you'll
ever use. What it does is actually melt the decal into the surface
of what it is on.

I'll test it for you on a piece of metal that is painted with the same epoxy
paint to make sure it doesn't affect the epoxy finish. You will not be able
to tell it was ever a decal after this stuff does its thing.

[Sir Brian]

Well forget the "SolvaSet" stuff! It does not react well to the epoxy based paint.
Made the test decal look much worse than the decal by itself. 

Your shield btw, only needs the blue field added and will be done. I'll probably be
able to ship it back to you by this weekend.

One thing I noticed though is the location of the bolts securing the hand strap is
dead center of the white field. You will have a bothersome time I'm afraid of getting
your dragon charge stenciled on that. I highly recommend you use that cream based
paint I told you about in one of my old e-mails. Since it takes a good 24 hours for that
particular paint to set it will be forgiving enough to wipe clean off if you mess up the first
couple of times. To clean the stenciling paint off from the epoxy based shield paint, do
NOT use anything stronger than rubbing alcohol or mineral spirits. Thinners could dull the
epoxy finish. 

[Sir Edward]

OK, that's good to know, I'll keep the thinners in mind. Yeah, working around those bolts will be interesting. Worst case scenario is that I paint right over them and put up with it. But I'll play with the positioning a bit.

Thanks again for helping out with the shield! I can't wait to see it.

[Sir Brian]

Well here is a sneak preview of an Ailette. I hope it won't spoil your grand
unveiling later when you post pictures of the finished shield and Ailettes.

Is the shade of blue okay?