Stephen R. Hickman;47083 wrote:

What about fer? Does your scheme disregard it as well?

Fer?  I don’t remember a heraldic tincture named fer.

I like when artists use different shades of a color in different arms. While obviously I am not a fan of off the wall colors like teal, but certainly some shades of green agree with certain arms more than others. As long as it’s in the spectrum, then It seems fine to me.

And Joe… with your crayola argument, what if the artist wanted an acual gold/siler instead of yellow and white. They are called metals

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Fer? I don’t remember a heraldic tincture named fer.

i think he means fur joe.

and i agree mike…with a limited pallete, one would need to try to press down lightly with black…or else begin to lightly use other colors including mixing them to create more than the basic primary color jobs.

Stephen R. Hickman;47083 wrote:

What about fer?  Does your scheme disregard it as well?

I assume, maybe incorrectly, that you are referring to the French word fer meaning iron. Iron and steel would fall under the category of Proper and could be illustrated according to Joseph’s method by using the black crayon lightly as Michael Swanson suggested earlier.

Linusboarder;47092 wrote:

And Joe… with your crayola argument, what if the artist wanted an acual gold/siler instead of yellow and white. They are called metals

You misunderstand me.  I didn’t mean that artists should limit themselves to crayolas in rendering arms.  What I said was that, in designing arms, people shouldn’t use colors that don’t appear in the 8-crayon box.

If anyone interested in this topic hasn’t read Bruno Heim’s book, Or and Argent they should.

Joseph McMillan;47096 wrote:

You misunderstand me.  I didn’t mean that artists should limit themselves to crayolas in rendering arms.

No, we understood you.  Other brands of crayons, besides Crayolas, would also be acceptable.  Paint is too messy.  :p

Joseph McMillan;47096 wrote:

You misunderstand me.  I didn’t mean that artists should limit themselves to crayolas in rendering arms.  What I said was that, in designing arms, people shouldn’t use colors that don’t appear in the 8-crayon box.

Ahh ok, no fuscia then

i haven’t read that one good Father. i will have to look for it.

however, and speaking generally not to anyone specifically, Anthony Wood says - and i don’t know if Heim held the same opinion - that there is a great variance of color one can use within the color so long as extremes in color are not employed and it is good to do so - this is a paraphrase mind you.

i am inclined to agree. there are times that different forms of red are called for - including sanguine like in my own archdiocese arms which are always rendered in deep blood red - and that is important, as it both mirrors the darker red soil that Colorado is known for and which we get our name, but also for the blood of Christ. now can that be done using a regular red? yes. but it can also be done as it is and since it can ... why not?

in this regard i have to respectfully disagree with joe. limiting a palette in this manner is harsh, if not extremely harsh, and an over-correction of those retarded arms (sorry if that’s not politically correct i don’t want to offend anyone, but i just finished watching Carlos Mancia and it is in my mind now and can’t get it out…de-de-dee) that have a very blue tinted purpure or vice versa and that one can’t tell what it is supposed to be.

as an artist, and i know that others may disagree, i find that there are a great many ways to make color come to life using varying hues, shades and tints. but, as i said before, the trick is not to let your imagination get ahead of common sense and if it does be willing to admit it and create something else more appropriate. for me anyway that is the trick. still for any time i went weird and used a bad choice of tint – and there have been those times – i would not want to loose the diversity of hue, shade or tint…not for anything.

for that matter…how in the world would an artist model up anything if there were not such a variety as opposed to a basic 8 color palette? Simply ‘press harder’ with the same color so to speak? modeling IMHO is the clearest way that a basic artist becomes a good artist and a good artist becomes a fine artist and a fine artist becomes a master artist. i could not look at the works of Foppoli, or de Bruin, or Andersen, or Jamieson, or Bromley, or Wood, or even our own master Alex, if they lost all of the modeling they had, which they would if they were restricted to 8 simple colors with zero variance. Gone would be the beautiful diapering that we see in arms, a well as a modeling up of charges, shields, crests especially, supporters as well, etc.

now, i may be missing the boat here…i am on pain meds…and i may be missing the joke that joe is giving us and if so then by my misunderstanding this i am happy to be the next joke.

Joseph McMillan;47039 wrote:

I agree.  What makes it heraldry is that it follows multi-century old customary rules.  You can stretch the rules a little bit, maybe, but if you stretch them too far, it’s not heraldry any more.  That doesn’t make something illegal, immoral, unethical, or even ugly.  It just makes it something other than heraldry.

Okay, let me put on my devil’s advocate hat for a moment. What makes it heraldry is that it’s the practice of devising, blazoning, and granting armorial insignia… (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary). Webster’s Unabridged has an expanded definition, and is much the same as this definition from Farlex’s Free Dictionary online:

1. a. The profession, study, or art of devising, granting, and blazoning arms, tracing genealogies, and determining and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms.

3. Pomp and ceremony, especially attended with armorial trappings; pageantry.

In fact, no dictionary I can find says anything about "multi century old customary rules" defining our practice. "Proper terms", as in 1 b. above, yes, but not customary rules. In fact, the only place I’ve found anything that says that something ceases to be heraldry if the rules are pushed too far is amongst heraldists.

The reason I’m questioning your statement, Joseph, is that I’m getting the "why can’t I use a specific pantone color?" argument (and variations) from some younger folk who want to be armigerous, but also want a particular shade of magenta, etc in their achievements. The color-on-color rule makes sense: the design should be easily readable across a battlefield. This same answer quells the fires of those who want quarterings, etc, out of the box. But "it’s not heraldry anymore if you push the rules too far"?  Says who? As one young pup put it to me recently: "The fact that heraldry has traditionally used a limited palette of colors makes for an interesting design challenge, but it’s not the eleventh commandment of God."

Is your response really, "If the color doesn’t come out of the Crayola box, it isn’t heraldry"?

Donnchadh;47103 wrote:

in this regard i have to respectfully disagree with joe. limiting a palette in this manner is harsh, if not extremely harsh, and an over-correction of those retarded arms (sorry if that’s not politically correct i don’t want to offend anyone, but i just finished watching Carlos Mancia and it is in my mind now and can’t get it out…de-de-dee) that have a very blue tinted purpure or vice versa and that one can’t tell what it is supposed to be.

as an artist, and i know that others may disagree, i find that there are a great many ways to make color come to life using varying hues, shades and tints. but, as i said before, the trick is not to let your imagination get ahead of common sense and if it does be willing to admit it and create something else more appropriate. for me anyway that is the trick. still for any time i went weird and used a bad choice of tint – and there have been those times – i would not want to loose the diversity of hue, shade or tint…not for anything.

 

for that matter…how in the world would an artist model up anything if there were not such a variety as opposed to a basic 8 color palette?

Let me try this one more time.  I am not, not, not saying that artists emblazoning arms should limit themselves to the eight specific shades in the original Crayola box.  I understand about shading and molding and the fact that there’s no standard heraldic blue or red, for heaven’s sake.

My suggestion is that a well-designed coat of arms—that is, one designed in the original medieval spirit of heraldry—could be emblazoned using the original 8-color box of Crayolas.  Thus, when designing new arms, a person could ask himself, "could this be drawn with the colors in the original Crayola box?" as one test of whether the design is properly heraldic.

The fact that crayons are generally not good for rendering small detail may be another reason why they’d be useful in drawing a test emblazonment—if the charges are too small or detailed to be clear in a crayon drawing, then they’re too small or detailed period.

The concept also addresses the point made by Anthony Wood quoted by Denny.  The would-be armiger who wants to specify the exact shade(s) of green, blue, or red in his arms is confronted by the reality that, in heraldry as in the basic Crayola box, there’s only one green, blue, or red crayon.  This doesn’t mean the armiger can’t ask for a brighter blue or a darker green in a particular rendering!  It does mean that he can’t blazon a specific shade, and thus that the same arms rendered in a muted blue or an olive green are in fact the same arms.

If people will go back and look at the first post on this subject, they’ll see that I didn’t say, "here is a new rule."  I said, "here’s a new way of stating an old rule."  I can’t believe there’s any controversy over what colors are in the basic medieval heraldic palette.

Donnchadh;47103 wrote:

i haven’t read that one good Father. i will have to look for it…

i will have to look for this Heim book, however, but considering how much i paid for his other one…i dunno…

It’s going for $30.00 on alibris http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm or for $80.46 from "Heraldry Today" http://www.heraldrytoday.co.uk/

Patrick Williams;47107 wrote:

In fact, no dictionary I can find says anything about "multi century old customary rules" defining our practice. "Proper terms", as in 1 b. above, yes, but not customary rules. In fact, the only place I’ve found anything that says that something ceases to be heraldry if the rules are pushed too far is amongst heraldists.

Of course.  Who else would you expect to explain heraldic custom?  Basket weavers?

Look, my dictionary defines "baseball" as "a game played with a hard, rawhide-covered ball and wooden bat by two opposing teams, properly of nine players each; it is played on a field with four bases forming a diamond-shaped circuit which a runner must complete to score a run."

Nothing about how many outs in an inning, how many innings, that the bases are run counter-clockwise, about how batters and runners are put out, or how the ball is put in play by the pitcher. Not to mention such esoterica as double-substitutions, balks, and the infield fly rule.

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The reason I’m questioning your statement, Joseph, is that I’m getting the "why can’t I use a specific pantone color?" argument (and variations) from some younger folk who want to be armigerous, but also want a particular shade of magenta, etc in their achievements. The color-on-color rule makes sense: the design should be easily readable across a battlefield. This same answer quells the fires of those who want quarterings, etc, out of the box. But "it’s not heraldry anymore if you push the rules too far"? Says who? As one young pup put it to me recently: "The fact that heraldry has traditionally used a limited palette of colors makes for an interesting design challenge, but it’s not the eleventh commandment of God."

Running the bases counterclockwise isn’t the 11th commandment, either. But if you run them clockwise, or if the ball is put in play by hitting it off the ground with a polo mallet, whatever you’re playing isn’t baseball.

To change the analogy: if you’re writing a haiku, it has to have three phrases (indicated in English by three lines) of five, seven, and five syllables each, right? If you’re writing a sonnet it has to have 14 lines and follow one of a very limited number of verse and rhyme schemes. If you’re composing a sonata, it has to be divided into movements, and the first movement has to be in sonata form (exposition, development, recapitulation).

In all three art forms, poets and composers have tried to stretch the limits, sometimes successfully. But if the haiku writer produces not a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables, but rather a five line poem of 3-3-2-2-3 metrical feet, rhymed AABBA, then he has not written a haiku but a limerick. If a graphic designer produces something in multiple shades of magenta, burnt umber, and fuchsia in 3-D perspective, then whatever it is, it isn’t a coat of arms, even if he slaps it on a shield.

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Is your response really, "If the color doesn’t come out of the Crayola box, it isn’t heraldry"?

More or less, yes. I’ll grudgingly concede murrey, sanguine, and bleu celeste, but not much more.

Patrick Williams;47107 wrote:

In fact, the only place I’ve found anything that says that something ceases to be heraldry if the rules are pushed too far is amongst heraldists.

Hence the raison d’etre for Heraldic Authorities. It isn’t the place of heraldists to be attempting to define such things; it’s heralds who should be. I’m not saying that heraldists shouldn’t be discussing, debating, researching, arguing, etc. That’s the fun of something that you feel passionately about. But, when there is something to be decided, like "whether or not it is heraldry, or good heraldry based on the palette of colors used" the heraldic authority of a place makes the decision rather than it being decided by majority vote.

Now, the fact that we have no such heraldic authority in the USA does not give us the right to do whatever we want because there is no one to stop us. That’s the reasoning of an adolescent. I put it to you that until such time (if at all) that the USA has some kind of heraldic authority it is better that we err on the side of going with basic, commonly accepted practices and customs (like sticking to five basic colors, two metals and several furs) rather than coming up with new ideas simply because we can and there’s no one to stop us.

Aside from all the good arguments limited to just the discussion of tincture the idea that a particular shade of some color could be specified in a blazon goes against another long-held and time-honored heraldic practice/custom. Namely, that there is not only one artistic rendering of a coat of arms that is "correct" which must be slavishly copied over and over. See the image below (with apologies to David Boven). It’s all the same arms.

If potential armigers want to get that kind of specific for their personal symbol then they should devise a logo and not have a coat of arms at all.

http://excoboard.com/forums/18883/user/133625/246840.jpg

Has anyone seen the movie Ballroom?  It is a comedy about competitive ballroom dancing.  The lead character creates quite a stir because he changes a step in one of the dances, all in the name of freedom and creativity.  Of course the other characters behave like a bunch of foolish old hens.

I don’t mean to suggest that the comments or behaviors of our members compare to the characters in the movie.  Certainly this is not the case.  God, knows that I love a good debate.  The point of the reference is to note the dilemma of the movie:  Artists push the limits, and traditionalists push back.  Ultimately the the judge will be the audience.

Of course the artist gets to choose which audience he wishes to please.  Will an avant-guarde image of a coat of arms please the arts community at large, the heraldic community, a patron, or only himself.

In my personal opinion, the artist creating a new CoA should write the blazon, and imagine what it would look like if an other artist created the emblazonment.  Does making this design work depend solely on the specific shade of blue and red?  If the answer is yes, then the execution may be fantastic, but the design itself is not so good.