{"id":13544,"date":"2021-11-02T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T09:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=13544"},"modified":"2021-10-20T20:24:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T19:24:55","slug":"thinking-about-a-new-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/2021\/11\/02\/thinking-about-a-new-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about a new project&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-medium is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-3-241x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13542\" width=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-3-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-3-768x955.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-3.jpg 777w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things you need to know before you dive enthusiastically into family history is that the horrors are just as likely as the heroes. In our case, a land dispute at the turn of the 19th Century saw some ancestors of my maternal great grandmother getting their family tree professionally investigated and drawn up. They didn&#8217;t get the land (although what the Professor of Music at Cambridge wanted with land in London escapes me), but &#8220;The SheepStealers&#8221;, as we call them, have been updated ever since. As far as I can tell, we&#8217;ve got ancestors on both sides of every civil dispute since the Norman Conquest, so we can pick our favourite distant ancestor depending on our own historical hang-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My mother, in particular, was completely thrilled to find that William Marshall, &#8220;the Greatest Knight&#8221; was on there. We went to his burial place in London, (pre-Covid) and I painted this watercolour of his effigy when I got home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-medium is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-300x280.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13541\" width=\"368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-300x280.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-768x717.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Fast forward some years, and Tanya Bentham of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/opusanglicanum.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Opus Anglicanum<\/a> blog, has published a book about Opus Anglicanum, which has got me thinking I would like to do some. I will probably do one of Tanya&#8217;s little heads to get the hang of the idea, but, being me, I decided that I would, as Ophelia (didn&#8217;t quite) put it, &#8220;wear my Opus with a difference&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;ve settled on Umpteen-Times-Great-Grandfather William as my subject, on a visit to the Ch\u00e2teau de Tancarville, where he had his knightly training as a teenager. As you can see, I&#8217;ve got out my gouache to try to pick the right balance of colours, bearing in mind that the sky is going to be underside couched in gold. I can&#8217;t decide whether to make his horse a chestnut, a roan, or a grey &#8211; although given it&#8217;s opus, I get the impression I could make the horse blue and get nothing but praise! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-2-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13543\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-2-228x300.jpg 228w, https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Add-Watermark_2021_10_05_06_49_58-2.jpg 712w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 228px) 100vw, 228px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the changes I&#8217;m going to make to the knight I&#8217;m adapting for William, is that I&#8217;m going to make his shield a bit bigger, so that his correct coat of arms (this was from memory so I need to look him up) is clear and it is obvious that I&#8217;m not doing just any knight, but specifically William. I think I should do something different with his hand, as well as remembering to give his horse reins and a saddlecloth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I need to get to grips with William&#8217;s real coat of arms, settle on my colour scheme and order my silks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things you need to know before you dive enthusiastically into family history is that the horrors are just as likely as the heroes. In our case, a land dispute at the turn of the 19th Century saw some ancestors of my maternal great grandmother getting their family tree professionally investigated and drawn&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/2021\/11\/02\/thinking-about-a-new-project\/\">Continue Reading Thinking about a new project&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[249,37,250],"class_list":["post-13544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-opus-anglicanum","tag-silk-threads","tag-william-marshall","radius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13547,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13544\/revisions\/13547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}