#jsamnfanart

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.

 Here’s my piece for the @jsamnfanart exchange - happy holidays, @erebusodora! One of your prompts was John Segundus in the King’s Roads; there he is. Lost, probably. Having fun, most certainly.

Stephen Black: The King of Lost-Hope

Hear on the wind how the pendulum swings Feel how the winter succumbs to the spring Over the palisade morning will break Rise up to meet it, oh sleeper awake Gather the soldiers, the heir to enfold Crown him and give him a scepter to hold Sound every horn as the columns extend Up to the hill where the king will ascend Look to the sky where the sign will be shown Heaven and earth and the king on his throne (The Oh Hellos - Caeser)

Made for the ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell’ exchange over at @jsamnfanart

I just had to do the prompt of Stephen as the King of Lost-Hope because he’s amazing. I like to imagine him as growing into a confident and shrewd ruler in Faerie, long may he reign!

John Segundus ~ Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

This is my entry for the @jsamnfanart Christmas Fan Art Exchange and I was able to pinch hit for the magnificent @erebusodora!

Their prompt was “John Segundus on the King's Roads” and I somehow got stuck on the idea of him just being able to ... slip between the two spaces while studying.

John Segundus & John Childermass ~ John Squared

This is my entry for the @jsamnfanart Christmas Fan Art Exchange. Thank you again for organizing this year, too! :3

My match was @apidologist and their prompt was “Childermass and Segundus bickering/teasing (romantic or not)” and I really enjoyed it because those two were on of my JSAMN OTPs! <3

Made for the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell exchange by @jsamnfanart!

For @mrgabel, hope you’ll like it! My prompt was: “Stephen Black and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair in front of a mirror framed with fine ornaments, blue-ish, hazy light; the mirror revealing Stephen as a king.”

The wonderful scene in the book where they first meet has something darkly surreal to it, putting it mildly. So I made the scenery derelict and vaguely inhuman... The sort of room where you can’t be entirely certain that the furniture won’t take it into its mind to attack you.