Arms of James Stewart of Atholl

[WolfmanJack]

I am a descendant of James Stewart, fourth son of Alexander Stewart, known as the "Wolf of Badenoch." In The heraldry of the Stewarts, with Notes on All the Males of the Family, Descriptions of the Arms, Plates and Pedigrees, by George Harvey Johnston, James' arms are described as "recorded by Grant of Rothiemurchus in 1755 as Gold, a fess chequy blue and silver, between three black wolves heads couped, (Lyon Register. Plate III., Fig. 39."

I do not have access to the original of Johnston's book, nor an original of the Lyon Register. Can anyone help me determine what these arms would look like?

[Chas]

Hello Jack,

How about this:



Regards

Chas

[Cygnus]

The wolves are not really done in a traditional heraldic style, but were all I could find with short notice.

EDIT: And Chas beat me! I took too long finding wolves' heads!

[Standard]

Chas and Cygnus what program / website are you guys using to draft these? I've been searching for one for a while and can't seem to locate one that works.

Sorry for the hijack.

[WolfmanJack]

Chas and Cygnus, thank you so very much. These are fantastic!

One Question: How did you both know there should be three rows of dicing?

Like His Highness, I am eager to know the tools you use to make these.

[JSFMACLJR]

Chas and Cygnus, thank you so very much. These are fantastic!

One Question: How did you both know there should be three rows of dicing?

Like His Highness, I am eager to know the tools you use to make these.

The dicing--a fess chequy Azure and Argent-- is a standard heraldic charge, and is always shown that way.

[WolfmanJack]

Thank you, experts. I'm learning a great deal here.

[Cygnus]

Chas and Cygnus what program / website are you guys using to draft these? I've been searching for one for a while and can't seem to locate one that works.

Sorry for the hijack.

The program I use is Microsoft Paint. It's crude, but I just can't wrap my brain around anything even slightly more complex.

I usually try to draw my own charges, but when drafting up a quick "sketch" of how a shield would look, I usually just use whatever an internet image search yields.

Sorry if that's not helpful - I'd be happy to send you the blank "template" .bmp file that I usually use if you'd like to have a go - just PM me.

[Chas]

Hi Standard,

I use a combination of programmes and sources. For the end result, I too use MS Paint. Although many disparage it, I have found it to be 'small, but mighty'.

I have Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS (which are of course both industry standard), But I have found them to be too complex for my needs. It is like an eight year old kiddie wanting a push-along scooter, but all he is given is a Harley. Beautiful to look at, but he will not be able to use it for years and years.

I have all the Seriff products, but have not used them for years. I also use PaintShopPro as an transition programme.

For sources, I first look to Wikipedia. All graphics on Wikipedia are copyright free. In the 'Commons' part of Wikipedia is a vast repository of heraldic imagery.

They are in the .png (scaleable vector graphic) format and in the main have been produced using 'Inkscape' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkscape It is a free to download programme and some say that it is as powerful as Photoshop.

I am trying teach myself, but am not having the success and progress that I hoped. So in the meantime I use Paint.

This is the process. Go to Wikipedia. I looked up 'clan', in the links at the foot of the page, I found 'Stewart', click. Halfway down Stewart is an infobox of Stewart arms. This is thumbnail of Stewart of Stewart:
Note the chequerboard stripe (fess) has 3 rows (standard for Stewart).
Clicking on the thumbnail brings you to the full sized image. You get four sizes to choose from - 200px, 500px, 1000px and 2000px. I always click on 2000.

The image is now as big as it is going to get. I then down load onto my computer. I have a separate folder in 'Downloads' for this. Once you have the image, you are able to manipulate as you wish. If I open a .png in Paint, I always get a black background. If I am after one of the charges on a different colour, no problem. If the charge is on black, then there are problems. If you notice the thumbnail above all the bits have a black outline - if you take away the black background, you loose all the black outlines as well. In that case, I open it in PaintShopPro and and copy to Paint. The background is now white.

After working on it, I always save as .png - it is easy to convert to .jpg, if I have to.

I have a library of charges, ordinaries and sub-ordinaries on a USB flash drive. I only work with the 'heater' shaped shields.

I know this all sounds a bit disjointed, but it is far easier to do than to talk about. My advice would be to find a heater shield shape to use as a master and start from there.

Regards

Chas

[WolfmanJack]

Wow! You've opened a whole new world for me, Chas.