2010-01 ACORN Cover: German Clock-watch, 1590
This was my first piece for the SCA’s Kingdom of Atlantia. While I had been creating a cover a month since November of of 2007 for one of their sub-groups, the Barony of Hawkwood (Asheville, NC), this was the first one I’d done for Atlantia as a Kingdom. It was a brain twister.
While many of the SCA’s kingdoms have converted to a full 8 ‘/2″ x11″ “Magazine format,” Atlantia is still following the older half-sheet format, gray-scale only. I had to revert to the format I used to use for the covers I was creating before the AEstel went to full-sheet, and before I found Hawkwood’s TALON, with it’s glorious full-color digital format. Yeah, I’d been spoiled, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten how to create a good black-and-white piece. After all, for years, all of the publications I was working for were all black-and-white all the time. I cut my teeth on pen-and-ink line work for not-for-profit ‘zines that couldn’t afford to pay me.
This was for December. My full-color cover for the TALON was “Charity.” I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I went for something more mechanical, that would translate well to ink: a study of a truly remarkable early “clock watch,” made in brass. It’s from Germany, estimated as dating to about 1590. (December, the New Year, a changing of the guard, my first cover for the ACORN, Vlad’s first issue as kingdom chronicler, interpret as you will…) I much as I admire the technology (tiny precise wheels and gears!) what I really loved, artistically, were all of those shadows and fiddly-bits.
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