Philomene’s Scriptorium

I admit to being in awe of the Mira. To have such an amazing piece of art done by not one but two artists far beyond their contemporaries is astounding. One, Georg Bocskay, showed the world what heights of calligraphy could be performed while the other, Joris Hoefnagel, created such realistic art to accompany each written page. They flow together seamlessly synergistically creating more than each separately.

The recipient of this scroll specialized in hospitality and service to the kingdom. To me there is no better example of a representative of Atlantia and all that it embodies than Spike, our horned seahorse.

Wanting to do this in the Squashed Bug style, I searched for a photo of a seahorse that appealed to me and had a nice coronet. I did find the one that I used as a model, but that one was orange, and this being Atlantia, Spike most definitely had to be Atlantian blue.

Spike is all done in gouache with a bit of shell gold along the spiral of his horn (hard to photograph). The calligraphy is my take on one from the Mira. Studying the photos zoomed in shows just how Georg Bocskay created his swoops and swirls around the letters. My take has the words closer together (line to line) than the exemplar due to the wording in the scroll.