I have often seen emblazonments described as being "in the medieval style." My question is what does it mean for a coat of arms to be painted in the medieval style?
What distinguishes a painting in the medieval style from other styles? What other styles of painting arms are there? Is there a "Tudor style"? A "College of Arms style"? A "Canadian Heraldic Authority style"? A "modern style"?
If so, what are some good examples of each style?
I would be especially interested in hearing from our artist friends.
Travis
P.S. If a moderator thinks this thread should be in a different subforum please feel free to move it. Heraldic arts seem liked the best place to me.
At its most basic, I would identify medieval "style" as the type of heraldry from which the standards are set with large helmets and regular looking heater shields.
I would point out an example of non-medieval heraldry would be 18th and 19th century emblazonments which might use "scenery," more realistic "proper" charges, very busy compartments, overly large shield devices and very small and wondrously mutated helms and shield shapes.
I think more than that, each country and even each artist could be considered a "type" of heraldry in many cases; too many to count?
At the moment, I am limiting myself to becoming discerning enough to tell the two most important types of heraldry apart: good heraldry and bad. 
medieval style I would rather call it in the style of .... and for the .... you can fill in a famous armorial of that timeperiod.
I agree with Jeffrey about the country / artist could be considered a type or rather a specific style.
‘Medieval style’ in contemporary heraldic art to my mind is a simple heater shape shield or a shield a bouche (angled) as it would naturally hang from it’s strap and I always tend to distort the perspective of the helm a little if I am using a tilting helm, a kind of modernised Garter stall plate look if you like. Sometimes, if I am using a pot helm, it is a different matter altogether but I still tend to angle these until it appeals to my ‘medieval’ eye!
To my mind heraldry, like other fields of art, architecture, music etc, comes in many different period, national, and house styles.
As Ton says, for ‘medieval’ style, there are many to choose from. The Codex Manesse, the Armorial of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Toison d’Or), the many rolls of arms, the Order of the Garter chapel stall plates mentioned by Andrew. A google for images under these keywords should yield a feast of them.
The College of Arms certainly has a house style. It’s had many over the centuries, the current style having evolved since the 1920s/30s. A browse through Robert Young’s Civic Heraldry of England & Wales website [http://www.civicheraldry.co.uk ] will yield many examples of Victorian, Edwardian, and more recent artwork.
"Medieval style" is very much a generalisation, and as such, it usually means that the image is not spoiled by the main vices of the post-medieval era (such as messy and complicated composition, use of naturalistic and specifically technological forms, overuse of marshalling, etc).
Outwith a light-minded twaddle, one has to be cautious in applying the term to anything as there is no "single medieval style". For example, it looks, and is almost commonly considered, not really medieval to combine charges of different scale, placing larger charges together with small ones; but in fact it was often done in medieval armory, to mark out common charges added for difference. In my opinion, the true medieval feeling of detail was more sharp than it is assumed by those who are playing in medievalism 
The definition in question may be broadly applied to design of arms as well as to the way of emblazonment.
Michael Y. Medvedev;91949 wrote:
"Medieval style" is very much a generalisation, and as such, it usually means that the image is not spoiled by the main vices of the post-medieval era (such as messy and complicated composition, use of naturalistic and specifically technological forms, overuse of marshalling, etc).
Outwith a light-minded twaddle, one has to be cautious in applying the term to anything as there is no "single medieval style". For example, it looks, and is almost commonly considered, not really medieval to combine charges of different scale, placing larger charges together with small ones; but in fact it was often done in medieval armory, to mark out common charges added for difference. In my opinion, the true medieval feeling of detail was more sharp than it is assumed by those who are playing in medievalism
The definition in question may be broadly applied to design of arms as well as to the way of emblazonment.
I would tend to agree with Michael’s comments. Anthony Wood although painting in the 20th Century certainly had the ‘medieval’ about his work and it comes from a feeling and a sympathy for the age and of course as a direct descendant of those craft ancestors his and indeed my own tradition is medieval in that we use the same materials and techniques mostly used in that time. The heraldry he taught and that I continue owes more to the tradition of manuscript illumination than to say graphic art.