May 2012 Entry: Gaelynta

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

The w looks fine. I really like the calligraphy. Very classy looking. This is promising to be really good. I probably won't have a chance again

[Gidde]

Thanks guys! I've been working hard on this alphabet; I'm probably going to make it my next font.

[Kearnaun]

This looks amazing! The W on the compass rose itself is fine I think. A bit more space towards the borders might have been better, but there is certainly no reason to start over because of this. And looking at your entry I seriously need to break out my old pens again to practice with them. Both steady lines and caligraphy.

[Gidde]

Thanks, Kearnaun!

I didn't get nearly as much done on this over the weekend as I wanted to I think the actual map will be winging it with the pen at this point, as time is REALLY getting short. I wanted to wait until tomorrow when I could scan it all in one piece, but I'm in a quandary so I'm posting now.

What I've done is titled the map (can't really call it a cartouche, since the words are just hanging out there) and colored in the compass rose, added in the island to cover up the rose misplacement, and got the color in on the sea. I may go over the sea again to darken it, if there's time before the challenge ends. The "foil" is really just gold calligraphy ink, and I manually embossed the title with a tracing stylus, so that it would pop a little better.

My quandary is this. I have these white spaces in the compass rose that for the life of me I can't figure what I should do with. The best I (and my husband) could come up with was to leave them white; we both thought any more gold or black (or blackened gold) would be too much, and I think a color would look strange at this point. What do you guys think? Does the white look unfinished?

### LATEST WIP ###

[arsheesh]

Gidde, I like your compass!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Bogie]

Excellent Work! I like the Rose, the white is okay with me, looks fine. If you did want to color the white spaces, maybe navy blue would look good.

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

You could win this on compass and calligraphy alone

[Sapiento]

Looks awesome even in this early stage!

[Korash]

I do like what you did with the title. Looks more like embossed gold...

have you thought of giving the compass the same sort of treatment? not that it really needs it

looking good

[flocko]

The white in the compass rose looks purposeful to me. I think it's really nice as it is.