Cilgerran 26th Aug 2019

Since my brother will be learning about castles in September, we decided to visit Cilgerran castle this bank holiday. We expected to walk around a quiet ruin, read the information signs, take some photos and be done with the place - but what we experienced was so much more exciting.

Once we'd paid our entrance fee, we ambled into the castle grounds and weren't greeted by the empty green courtyard we were anticipating. We'd stumbled into a two day only medieval re-enactment camp! There were tents, re-enactors and visitors scattered around the place with bows, swords and shields on display. We approached the first tent, unsure of what to expect. Dad pointed out that they had long bows as we neared, and as if he'd just been stung, the man at the tent turned his attention to us and graciously explained that the 'long bow' was actually just a 'bow'. To the medieval people the long bow was a bow, and it was the Victorians who dubbed it a long bow as their 'bows' were much shorter - people of the medieval times called these shorter bows, well, 'short bows'.

Shortly after that discussion, a call rang throughout the camp, informing everyone that a demonstration and talk about armour was about to begin. We all crowded around and watched. It would take the demonstrator around fifteen minutes to put her armour on, if she wasn't talking to all of us as she went - ten minutes at a push. Her armour weighed a whopping twenty-five kilograms, however, her companion's armour meant that he was carrying around an even more impressive forty-six kilograms!

After this, we were all treated to a sword fight! In a coliseum-esque fashion, we all crowded around the arena and watched as the two competitors entered the ring. As the two fought with all their might, the clang of metal was astounding! The battle took place in short bursts, and very quickly, the two skilled fighters were dripping sweat and calling for water.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/bb0054_3bc724c73b774fa4be7024d1189c2677/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Video credit to mum!

Next we explored the rest of the castle, and found another aspect of the camp, the tent of the fighters! We managed to have a close up look of the helmets and weapons, feeling the weight of them in turn. The helmet (pictured on the right of the picture below) weighed seven kilograms, distributing the weight across the shoulders - the inside was not unlike a motorbike helmet - and his opponents helmet (on the left), while looking a lot more hefty and threatening, weighed much less. He disclosed to us that his helmet had been made in Ukraine!

The array of swords were very fun to handle as he explained in which types of battles he like to use each one in, he even had a flail on the table - however these were never used in battle, only possibly in coliseums.

On the way home, we also stopped off at Pentre Ifan, the cairn was very atmospheric and it's always baffled me how people could build something like it - the amount of prior planning and sheer precision is truly awesome.

I feel incredibly lucky to have all of these amazing places a stone's throw away from my home, today has been truly wonderful and I've learnt so much - it's not something that I'm going to forget any time soon.

Until next time,

Mort

Process of Making a Comic

In this post I'll go through the process of making the comic I produced while in Leiden.

One of the more difficult things (for me anyway) is to come up with a concise enough story which doesn't turn into a 300 page epic that I have no hope of finishing. In this instance, that rocky path was curbed by two things: the time constraint of having only two and a half days worth of drawing, and the task at hand.

We each picked a museum at random and were sent to find one object that resonated with us. It was this object that we would create a story from, linking it somehow to the future in the process.

Naturally, out of all of the elegant, ancient and beautifully crafted items in the Oudheden, I pick a bashed up skeleton.

It was tucked away behind this slick and modern looking display wall, kind of as an afterthought to the rest of the iron age exhibit. Granted, when I first saw it I was still thinking about the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Roman statues, but over lunch in the museum it was this photo that got my brain working.

I began with a mind map, coming up with ways (rather morbidly) in which this poor soul had died all those thousands of years ago. It occurred to me that the story could literally take any shape, and so, to navigate away from the grim nature of the skeleton, I knew I wanted it to be funny.

The evening before, the tutors had mentioned that there should be a minimum of 5 pages. Keeping that in mind, I began planning out 6-7 pages trying to stretch out the story. However, as the sketching progressed, I realised that the story fits neatly into the 5.

Character design was very hasty. The initial roughs had no research behind them and the tutors picked up on that, having had a disapproving look cast my way I did some quick research into the iron age. To my relief, I was already rather familiar with their environment and attire (having come from a place with strong Celtic ties) and could quickly sketch out some more informed designs.

Now was just a case of scaling the story up to A5 and watercolouring it. At least, that was my plan. No sooner had I drawn out all the panels ready to be rendered, did my tutor peer over my shoulder and advise me to change the margins and panel layout!

It was no problem though, it meant a trip to the art shop and boy that was fun! They had everything any artist could possibly dream of. With my new A4 sketchbook, I repeated the process of drawing the panels and set to work drawing out the story.

Once that was all taken care of it was just a matter of slapping on some colour and BAM! ready for digitising and small edits. The edits are still taking place, and a title is still being mulled over, but isn't it amazing what you can achieve if you're pushed for time and have no internet access!

I hope you found this interesting! I will include photos of the uneditted, 'raw' images that I actually produced on the boat, below. There is one panel that needed redrawing which will be dropped onto the page in photoshop, so don't be confused by the rogue panel which has a page to itself.

See you again,

Mort

My Week in Leiden

Let me explain a little more about the trip before I start. A small group of us from Glyndwr and our tutor were invited to stay in a 1911 clipper boat to collaborate and bounce ideas off a group of students from Germany and the Netherlands. Primarily a comics project we were told that the theme for our work would be the 'future'.

So, at 5.00am eight of us set off on a journey to Leiden. I'm quite the morning person, and as a plus I managed to squeeze in a cup of tea so I was very ready and raring to go. The morning was extremely foggy, we had maybe not even 10 meters of visibility as we convoyed our way to Manchester airport.

Coincidentally, I wasn't allowed my phone in the area that I took this photo in, oops I guess?

Due to the adverse weather conditions the majority of the group had to dash off for their flight was earlier than mine. It was a rather leisurely wait, the three of us on the later flight got through security with no fuss and the actual flight was very pleasant.

We arrived in Amsterdam at around early afternoon and immediately got the train to Leiden. (They have double-decker trains, like what the heck, how cool is that?)

My first impression of Leiden was pretty positive, there were cycle lanes everywhere and the public transport had been really efficient. Our tutor brought up a maps app and we began our 10 minute trek to the boat we'd be staying in. We met up with the students and tutors from Germany and the Netherlands on the way there and descended on the boat as a mass of nervous but excited art students.

The boat was very cool, it was a very clever way of getting a lot of usually hermitted illustration students to socialize and interact with each other. I was proud of the effort I made to talk to people from the other universities, even if my introverted nature meant I reached my social quota around lunch time each day.

I did have my doubts about how everyone was going to work in such a communal area, but it worked - the lack of internet may have had something to do with it, a god send in hindsight - I was at my most productive over that week and I'll be sharing my work in a different post.

I was able to visit the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) which has one of the best collection of Egyptian and Roman artifacts I've ever seen, it was a very inspirational place and if you're ever in the area go and visit. Leiden has an excellent collection of museums and if you're a student take your student card, we got half the price off our museum tickets! Here are some of my favourite artifacts:

From here, we started our comics project. The rest of the trip was taken up mostly with drawing, but I did do a lot of walking. On our way home, we had a quick stop in Amsterdam, and we visited Lambiek (Europe's first comic shop!). It was cram-packed with amazing comics, and the staff there were incredibly friendly and helpful, if you're ever in Amsterdam I'd recommend seeking it out.

Seriously the best breakfast

One last note, the Dutch students had the greatest joy introducing us British folk to something called pure hagelslag - which translates to pure sprinkles.

We all had a go at putting these chocolate sprinkles onto buttered slices of bread and by the gods, it's the tastiest thing!

I had it for breakfast most days.

So that covers most of the trip, our flight back was delayed, but we were all in good company and the time passed quickly. I got into my bed at Wrexham around 00.10am and slept solidly for eight hours.

All in all, a good trip. I will include a gallery at the bottom for more photographs that I'd like to share with you!

Thanks for reading, see you next time,

Mort

#travel #leiden