[Antir_scribes] New questions from Bronwen

[Jillian Bower]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Ed and Terri Morrison <
norseman at homenetnw.net> wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> I've a new question  or maybe a set of questions
>
> 1) Have you ever motivated someone to become a new scribe? a new
> illuminator?  a new calligrapher?


I haven't yet, but I -was- motivated by someone to become a new scribe! (see
Angharad's response!).

>
>
> 2) If your answer to #1 was yes, what did you do or say to get that person
> interested?
>

Well, what -she- did was be all excited about what she was doing. She was
extremely willing to show me what she was doing, and to let me paint
charters (as a herald, I liked -seeing- the charters but had never painted
them). Enthusiasm is -highly- contagious.

>
> 3) Do you have any other ideas about how to get people who have never done
> it - involved in scribal activities?
>

Well, I've started by having a scribal social day at my house and I want to
make it mobile at some point in the near future. I'm too far away from the
scriptoriums that are in central Kingdom, so I really want to start having
one further south. It also really helps to make painting not scary -
medieval artists didn't color in the lines or always have consistent paint,
and knowing this made my starting all the easier.

>
> 4) What keeps people who do scribal stuff interested in continuing to do
> scribal stuff?
>

Hmm. What keeps me doing it is that I am a perfectionist. I want to be good
at scribal like I'm getting decently good at heraldry. I'm first and
foremost a herald, but the two disciplines are extremely linked together.
I'm too stubborn to give up :)

>
> 5) Do you think that uninitiated people think that scribal work is a
> mystery?
>

Hmmm. I know that some of the -advanced- work seemed mysterious to me before
I started. Like doing white white was at first, and shading. I don't know
why it seemed so mysterious except that it looked really cool and I thought
that it -must- be difficult because of that.

>
> 6) If your answer to question 5 was yes - what do you think are some ways
> to dispell the mystery.
>

Encourage more people to come to classes. Demonstrate to bystanders while
you're painting. Paint -everywhere-. Show them that the super-cool finished
product really isn't that hard to do. I took a class in white work at a
Kingdom Heraldic/Scribal Symposium, and it dispelled my myth pretty quickly.

>
> 7) do you have any good ideas on how to motivate experienced people to do
> scribal work?
>

Give them fun projects to do. I can't imagine that doing, for example, reign
after reign of Norse is going to be fun for an experienced scribe.  Let them
sink their teeth into more difficult and complicated work, and maybe have
them teach others what they are doing as they go along.

-- 
In service to An Tir,
HL Elizabeth Turner de Carlisle
Baronial Scribe, Adiantum
(otherwise known as the herald made into a scribe by a scribe who became a
herald)
Protégé to Master Finngall McKetterick, OP