Happy Christmas Eve! Here’s my piece for this year’s JSAMN art exchange, graciously put together by @jsamnfanart. The exchange has been a holiday highlight for me for the past two years, and I hope it continues for years to come!
This year, I was matched with @lord-uniscorn, who got the gears turning with some great prompts. I ended up choosing “Segundus taking notes while Lady Pole is telling seemingly nonsense tales.”
I took a few creative liberties here. The quote is from an actual tale she began to tell as Segundus and Honeyfoot took notes. Of course, they weren’t taking those notes in the style of a medieval illumination, but on a few levels the style really spoke to me for this prompt.
First, an illuminated manuscript was often given such detail to show that a person, or their words, were of great importance and value. Although sometimes the pair struggled to understand what Lady Pole was trying to tell them, they never really saw her as insane. They recognized the magic surrounding her and were diligent to try to find the meaning in her words, even if they were looking in the wrong places. To them, she and her words were both important and valuable.
In addition, I feel like a lot of the Segundus storyline is about his search for illumination, specifically of finding out why magic wasn’t done in England anymore. These illuminated words symbolize his own great desire to be illuminated.
I chose the colors carefully, with the red roses being an obvious choice. The browns represent England and specifically the rooms where Lady Pole told her tales; next to Lost Hope, they seemed monochromatic and dull, but somewhat stable. Finally, the blues are for Lady Pole’s stolen innocence.
I did this all by hand with Sharpies and BiC markers, which you can probably tell due to the mistakes and unbalanced formatting. I wanted to make it as close to what Segundus would actually have been able to do as possible.
Finally, this style is new to me, especially when it comes to the flat, undetailed people of illuminated manuscripts. I’m always open to suggestions! But most of all, I hope you like it, @lord-uniscorn.
