Here’s a visual record of the Pictish art workshop I ran at the Centre for Stewardship, Falkland on Saturday 30th May. I’m absolutely sure that Liz, Marek, Ali, Sophie and Sarah would be accepted as scribes and banner-makers by any self-respecting Pictish tribe…

We used illustrations of Pictish stone carvings for reference and made notebooks for storing tracings and drawings

Everyone created their own designs and tranferred them onto calico to make banners – some larger than others!

Natural mineral pigments (ochres) from the Fife coast provided rich colour for the banner designs

The beautiful finished banners (Ali has taken pigments home to finish the colourwork on his). The Pictish carved stones found the length of eastern Scotland may have been this colourful. Who knows? 

There’s a glimpse of East Lomond hill behind Sarah in this photo. Dr. Oliver O’Grady supervised a successful community dig on the east side of this hill in 2014 for the Living Lomonds Landscape Partnership and he thinks it was a very significant place during Pictish times. More about that on the Living Lomonds website: http://www.livinglomonds.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Big-Dig-East-Lomond-Hill-Fort.pdf

Illustrator Bob Marshall has created an amazing reconstruction of the hill fort in collaboration with Oliver. Spot the banners outside the ‘great hall’ at the top of the hill: http://www.bobmarshall.co.uk/portfolio/illustrations/east_lomond_fort.asp

And if you’d like to see (and buy) contemporary interpretations of Pictish art: http://www.ancientstoneart.co.uk/

The last word goes to Sophie’s Pictish archer.

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This workshop was funded by the Living Lomonds Landscape Partnership and hosted by the Centre for Stewardship, Falkland: http://www.centreforstewardship.org.uk/