metal · 01
Or
gold → engraved hatching
✦ Colour, pattern & legibility
The tincture laboratory.
An engraver can use dots and lines to represent tinctures that coloured paint would show directly. Compare those encodings, then change the field and charge to examine their contrast.
✦ The seven principal tinctures
Two metals.
Five colours.
A tincture is more than a hex code. The same Azure remains blue in oil paint, embroidery, stone carving, print, and digital art.
metal · 02
Argent
silver → engraved hatching
colour · 03
Gules
red → engraved hatching
colour · 04
Azure
blue → engraved hatching
colour · 05
Sable
black → engraved hatching
colour · 06
Vert
green → engraved hatching
colour · 07
Purpure
purple → engraved hatching
This is the Petra Sancta system.
The illustrated hatchings represent one historically influential convention, popularized in the seventeenth century, rather than a universal method in all periods or regions. Dots represent Or; unmarked white represents Argent; vertical, horizontal, crossed, and opposite diagonal lines represent the principal colours. Learn how engravers used it ↗
✦ Change one thing
A contrast
experiment.
Keep the star fixed while changing its tincture and the field beneath it. Compare gold on blue, blue on gold, and red on blue to see how the relationship between the two categories affects the drawing.
01 · Choose the field
02 · Choose the charge
✦ The design convention
A clean contrast.
The usual metal-on-colour convention is satisfied here.
An advisory about simple contrast is neither legal advice nor a determination of heraldic validity.
In pigment
In engraving
Azure, a mullet Or.
The shapes are identical. The right-hand illustration substitutes conventional texture patterns for their tinctures.
✦ All forty-nine combinations
The contrast
matrix.
Choose a field (row) and a charge (column). The darker cells aren't necessarily forbidden; they are combinations the introductory convention asks you to reconsider.
| Field ↓ / Charge → | Or | Argent | Gules | Azure | Sable | Vert | Purpure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Or | |||||||
| Argent | |||||||
| Gules | |||||||
| Azure | |||||||
| Sable | |||||||
| Vert | |||||||
| Purpure |
● different categories: ordinarily strong traditional contrast. ◇ same category: ordinarily discouraged for simple layering. The matrix intentionally omits divided fields, furs, natural-colour charges, and historical exceptions.
Read the relationship between the layers.
Metal on colour or colour on metal is a very good starting point. But the full practice of heraldry contains furs, partitions, counterchanging, charges proper, and historically accepted arms that cannot be fairly analyzed by this simple table. Study the tincture unit before using the checker as an absolute rule.
✦ Read the originals
Colour, recorded.
Hatching was a practical solution to the problem of representing colour where paint or colour printing was unavailable or uneconomical.
The Heraldry Society
Heraldry for Beginners
An introductory PDF with a color-code chart, conventions, and an explanation of furs.
Consult the source ↗The Heraldry Society
The Herald Painter
An artist explains why the hatching system was useful in engraving and books.
Consult the source ↗Romanian Parliament
Romania's legally specified hatching
Article 2 places monochrome heraldic hatching into the legal specification of Romania’s state coat of arms.
Consult the source ↗Bibliographical Society
A Brief Heraldic Guide
A historically informed introduction to the Petra Sancta scheme on bookbindings.
Consult the source ↗