Furs

Furs are patterns with fixed colours so they do not specified tinctures or colours. Tapisse (also tapisse of wheat ) isn't a true fur (it represents grains of wheat) but it works the same way so I have included it here.

Furs are intended to represent animal skins (although you can be assured that no animals were harmed in the making of DrawShield !) There are three groups of furs which differ in the two colours applied.

Herald's Notebook: In the ermine group the spots represent tails of the ermine creature, a member of the weasel family and more commonly known as a stoat in the UK.

In the vair group the pieces represent alternately placed belly and back skins of grey squirrels, although the actual shape can vary quite a lot. DrawShield uses quite angular shapes, but they are equally valid if drawn more rounded.

Finally the potent group are so called because the shapes look like the heads of crutches and are possibly derived from very stylised versions of vair.

Notes

Because the colours of furs are fixed you just need to give the name of the fur when providing a tincture. Furs are only clearly visible if applied to large areas or shapes, DrawShield does not allow them to be applied to very small features as they would not be seen clearly.

It can be hard to recall the colour pairs for the ermine group so if you are using the fancy editor on the create page the foreground and background colours of the text of the fur's name are set to those of the tails and background of the fur to remind you.