Art-Of-Arms
Comments 24
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…
please write to email: czekan@onet.pl
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have no skill with computer art, so I have to make do with hand drawn images that resemble my main work, which is cartooning.
Back around 1985, when I was thirty, I sent a collection of my drawings to a heraldic artist who had designed the arms of several bishops of Florida. The man's reply was insulting: he addressed me, a 30 y/o man, as if I were a child who had read his first book of elementary heraldry and who was now trying his clumsy worst to imitate the images of that book, and contemptuously proceeded to dismiss my carefully drawn and coloured images as childish scrawls.
Naturally, I was incensed, but, wishing to keep my cool, I consulted a priest from my parish, who told me that this was basically a misunderstanding, and that I should give the man a second chance.
I was in no way persuaded, but, out of consideration for the padre, I agreed to post again.
I wrote the man as polite a letter as I could manage--although seasoned with a zesty pinch of testiness--, and I explained that I am a cartoonist by trade, but that nevertheless I enjoy designing arms and flags so much that I have been creating armoury since the 70s. His reply came fast, and it was exactly what I had expected and feared. The jerk was even more PATRONIZING and CONDESCENDING than before, and pretty much dismissed my work as unworthy of being taken seriously as real heraldic art!
Totally incensed, I tore up both letters and flushed them down the toilet. Since then I have continued to design thousands of arms and flags--including devices for the 50 USA States and the District of Columbia--because the worth of an armorial device does not lie with its artistic rendition, but rather with the cleverness of the design, and how appropriate is that design to represent the entity--person, family, civic body--that it symbolizes.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I invite you to visit my profile and examine my HERALDRY gallery.
I pray to take computer classes, once I can afford them; in the meanwhile I will have to continue drawing my devices by hand. So now I ask you: even though my images are in no way as polished as yours, would you say that the designs themselves have merit? I pray that you may agree that they do, for heraldry is as natural and easy to me as breathing. To be the King of Arms of the New World, in charge of the heraldry of all the American countries, is a goal that would make me the happiest man in the world!