Christel Leake

Welcome to Christel's Corner

Greetings,

I'm THL Christel Leake and I am grateful you took the time to stop by. Here's a little info about me:

I'm approaching three decades in the SCA having started in Caid and lived and worked in Atenveldt, the East, Artemisia, An Tir, and now the West. I've been so lucky to have had a great many wonderful teachers along the way. Currently I am apprenticed to Viscountess Mistress Hilarie the Puppeteer and Viscount Master Sir Bjorn Jorsalfar of Bearhaven, and proteged to Mistress Anne of Whaleshaven. I regularly host weekly Scribal Arts and Sewing nights and occasional workshop weekends when we are not in a pandemic. You can find me co-hosting the later portion of most Sunday evenings in Sunday Nights with the Scribes started by the lovely Lady Jocelyn. At events in the West I am often the first face you see as I am the West Kingdom Constable running Gate. I can also be found camping with Bearhaven at most events or with Ermine Company at West An Tir and Great Western Wars.

Here you will find a sampling of items from my portfolio and some of my work in progress. I have more photos of my work available on Facebook. Please do give me feedback, constructive criticism, resources, ideas, or just a hello. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. I will do my best to respond, and kindly ask for gentle reminders if I forget, as I am often very busy and sometimes forgetful.

Thanks, and enjoy...

Current Work

Currently I am working on multiple scribal projects but only a couple I can share publicly so...

Scribal Starter Kits

I've sent out nearly 50 Scribal Starter Kits consisting of a variety of papers, squishes of a variety of paints, three sizes of brushes and a felt tip calligraphy marker as well as a very basic how to guide for practice during the pandemic. I'm so grateful to the new artists and calligraphers who have been willing to share their work with me. As promised I won't share their work until they are comfortable doing so but I have been brought much joy seeing their art and hope they will choose to share it with you all soon.

A Two Page Award Scroll for Seamus

Ever wonder how long it actually takes to make a personalized scroll? Some are faster, some are slower, you can read my timeline so far on this project below.

As part of the 48 Hour Scribal Competition held in February I started a scroll I knew I could not finish in time because I wanted to make it special for the recipient. It is based on the January pages in the Golf Book done by artist Simon Bening in a workshop in Bruges likely in the early 1540s.

To get to this point here is a timeline of what I did in the first 61.25 hours I worked on it:

3.5 hours of research on the recipient asking questions via messenger and, looking at photos, and ordering his book as well as messaging with people who know him to get a good idea of how to personalize it for him.

17 hours of research on apothecary and medieval medical manuscripts to settle on the Golf Book with nods to the Anicia Codex and the winter scene required for the competition.

5 hours of research and two calligraphy consultations with Master Bjorn and Master Thomas to decide on a Rotunda hand and practice it.

2.75 hours on preliminary layout and drafting

18.5 hours drawing and tracing portions of the design (tracing is period as evidenced by pattern books and manuscripts with repeated images).

3 hours on calligraphy layout and inking

11.5 hours painting base tones of reds and golds

Exemplar: The Golf Book

Found on the British Library Website here: https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/golf/accessible/pages1and2.html#content

The current progress on Seamus' scroll.

It is a slow process and I am learning an immense amount about shading in metals. There are some parts that make me quite happy and some parts that are less than appealing to me at the moment but all projects are like this for me. I have to push through to get to where I will like it again. Working on techniques definitely helps. That and a good knife for scraping anyways let me conquer the page.

Could I really call myself an Allyshian if I didn't paint sheep?

Heraldic Sheep for the Barony of Allyshia

The Barony of Allyshia has a long tradition of shepherding. As such I opted to enter the piece on the left in Barron Carrek's heraldic illumination competition.

Counting Sheep

Sleepless pandemic nights led to this monochromatic leaning sheep.

Social Butterflies

The lovely Mistress Hilarie taught a class on how to paint a butterfly. I took it and flew with it. Not only did my husband and son paint butterflies with me, I made thank you cards for a friend to send out. Below you will see the butterflies painted on pergamenata with gouache paints and inked with black micron pens, crow quill, and speedball acrylic ink. The class cards are trading card sized at 2.5"x 3.5" and the thank you cards with calligraphy are approximately 4"x 6". After each card is the exemplar butterfly image taken from Google. I'm really enjoying the butterflies because one of my goals is to use a lighter and finer paint stroke (I tend to be heavy handed), and to learn how to play with shading. I did better on some than others with showing the gradations of light and dark. Another skill I am practicing is drawing freehand and this was quite challenging because butterflies, while very symmetrical, are not perfectly symmetrical. I had to really study them and while mine are not as beautiful as the real thing, I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

My class butterfly.

My six year old's butterfly.

My Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

The exemplar- photographer unknown found on Google Images

My Postman butterfly.

The exemplar- photographer unknown found on Google Images

My monarch butterfly.

The exemplar- photographer unknown found on Google Images

My Crowned Hairstreak butterfly.

Exemplar- from Baltana wallpapers.

Recently Completed AoA Replacement

A replacement AoA scroll for Baroness Eleanora based on an original done by Viscountess Mistress Hobbit. Calligraphy in Uncial by Lord Wilhelm Appatheker vom Schwartzwalt, Illumination by THL Christel Leake done on 8.5" x 11" pergamenata with gouache paints and speedball acrylic ink.

Le Crapaud Gift

This was made as a thank you gift when Duke Hauoc named me La Fleur. It is meant to honor the four people who have kept this tradition going through the pandemic and as it is the 300th Crapaud this week fitting that it should be presented here. I'm grateful to Duke Hauoc, Duke Hans, Duchess Helga, and the ever wonderful Countess Alyce. Each quarter is a trading card size such that if they ever wanted to cut it apart and rejoin it later they could. The total page size is 8.5"x 11" on pergamenata using gouache and ink. There is diapering on the upper left and lower right cards which I teach a class on if you are interested (and no- not diapering for babies). You can see very enlarged versions of the cards below.

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