Only 45 minutes left to get A DREAM OF SWORDS on Kickstarter! For $16 plus shipping you'll get the hardcover book, three sword bookmarks, a pocket fieldbook, and a "Swords with Names and their Wielders" sketchbook zine.

Here's a flamberge-bladed (German) basket-hilted (English) broadsword from the early 17th century. This and 124 other museum sword drawings are being collected in A DREAM OF SWORDS which is now IN ITS FINAL 24 HOURS ON KICKSTARTER!!!

Here's another sword drawing from A DREAM OF SWORDS: a Cinqueda, named because the blade is five fingers wide. One theory as to the existence of these is the state(s) put blade length carry laws in place to make less likely vendetta duels/brawls, and these cleavers came in just under the legal limit.

Just two days left on the Kickstarter! For just $16 and shipping you'll get the book (hardcover, and with 125 sword drawings), a "named swords and their wielders" mini sketchbook, a fieldbook, and three bookmarks.

Swashtober 2: Agnes de Chastillon, aka Dark Agnes, from a pair of stories by Conan author Robert E. Howard. Agnes is a teen forced into marriage who kills the groom, flees, and becomes a swordist and intriguer.

#DarkAgnes #RobertEHoward #Swashbuckler #Swashbucklers #SwordArt #swords

Here's a Viking Sverð, from around the turn of the first millennium. This was one of my favorite swords to draw, because of those mother-of-pearl-looking inlays.

This and 124 other swords are being collected in A DREAM OF SWORDS, now on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schweizer/a-dream-of-swords

Hey, friends! I'm posting answers to sword questions folks have asked me, because I ain't an expert, but I HAVE drawn a book of swords, which is currently on kickstarter. Part 2 of a few!

The way that stretch goals work on kickstarter is that as a project makes more money, there are opportunities for the project to level up a bit at no additional cost to the backers/customers. Two of our stretch goals for A DREAM OF SWORDS include traveling to more museums to do an additional twenty-five pieces for the book; we've hit both of those goals, so I went up to the Cleveland Museum of Art to do ten of them. He's the first of that batch! (Next stop: Vienna!)

I do the initial sketches on site digitally, so that I can move and rescale things to fit the format and make sure I *understand* what I'm drawing - easier to do looking at a piece and being able to move your POV around than it is working from a photo - and then I take reference photos. I do the finished inking and painting at my desk at home, where I have a little more control than I do trying to work on a bench in a sometimes-crowded museum.

A DREAM OF SWORDS campaign

The Kickstarter for A DREAM OF SWORDS is one week in, and has hit all of its original stretch goals!

So even though the book is an embossed 2-color hardcover now (with silver foil on the horizon) and has twenty-five more drawings in than it did when it launched, it's still going to only be $16 plus shipping for backers. The price will go up for retail after the campaign is over but one of the things that I think is really neat about kickstarter is, thanks to the stretch goals, the folks supporting it out of the gate get more for less.

Also, because I'm doing twenty-five more drawings, that means there are now plenty of original pieces left for backers at that level.

Thanks so very much to everyone who's supported this campaign, and who told others about it and shared it. I really, really appreciate it!

I had a chance to chat with historical swordfighting expert Dr. Guy Windsor on THE SWORD GUY podcast about A DREAM OF SWORDS, swordfighting choreography, comics, and other stuff. If you're looking for something to listen to (or read, there's a transcript, too), here you go!

Hey, there, friends!

My new art book just went live on Kickstarter. It's a collection of sword drawings from some of the museums that I've visited over the last year and a half or so. If you're a sword buff (or like my museum drawings), I hope you'll consider backing it!

Chris

Hey, there, friends! I'm going to be releasing a collection of one hundred sword drawings from my recent visits to museums in NYC, Leeds, London, and Paris. I hope you'll visit the kickstarter preview here and click the "Notify Me" button - I'll be launching soon!

Another museum sword drawing: a pretty ornate German rapier

Another museum sword drawing: a bone-or-ivory-handled rapier from the turn of the 17th century

Here's a drawing of a calendar sword, from the hunting section of the Royal Armouries in Leeds; it's got a calendar etched into the blade, along with zodiac symbols. Real pretty antler handler, too (lots of the hunting swords had antler handles, and heavens, but they're nice to look at).

Work focus kept me from posting yesterday, so, catching up: Blades of May #17: a partisan English rapier with a wooden handle carved in a quilt pattern. The portraits on the once-gilded hilt are ostensibly of Charles I & his wife, Henrietta, but in that "every photo of an unidentified skinny guy in the old west is Doc Holliday" sort of way; the portraits might well simply depict the blade's cavalier owners

Blades of May #12: A ring-sword, found in Buckland . There's no universal scholarly agreement on the purpose of the rings - mostly they're believed to symbolize oaths - but one theory that I think is interesting (if unlikely) is that they were what was used to secure swords to scabbards during meetings between rivals, similar to how costume weaponry is secured at comic cons today.

Blades of May #10: a late-16th century sword inscribed with the seal of the Brewer's Guild of Cologne, as long as I am tall (6'3) and weighing a shave under ten pounds, from the upper gallery of the Royal Armouries in Leeds.