[Ansteorra] Charters and Scrolls and Painting, Oh My.

[Bethany Vann]

I had the pleasure serving as the scribal guild web admin for 3 years. One
of my pet projects was the creation of a "Charter Library" - showing
superlative examples of charters painted by our hard working scribes.  If
you haven't ever visited it, it's well worth the time, to show the broad
array of views and visions that our different scribes bring to the same
charter.
http://scribe.ansteorra.org/library/index.htm
In all the time I worked on the site, I never saw two that were *identical*.

There's a lot of ways that a charter can be customized for a recipient - and
there are a couple of scrolls (ones often awarded on the
battlefield: Centurion, Sable Falcon, Sable Talon) that are rarely ready
when the award is given, which gives a perfect opportunity for
customization. There are also increasing levels of difficulty in the
scrolls.  As the 'rank' of the award goes up, so also does the complexity of
the work.  I can think of one Baronial scroll I worked on for over 20 hours
- and that was all painting time! Thankfully, the hard work of Lasair ni
Fhionnualann in creating the design and doing the calligraphy, saved me a
heck of a lot more time.

There's also a LOT of exquisite custom and unique scroll work being done in
Ansteorra. There are over 100 examples of unique works posted on the scribal
website:   http://scribe.ansteorra.org/gallery2.html    They range from
Court Baronies to event invitations to Peerage scrolls, to the Treaty with
Calontir.

As a side note, I also have a custom scroll, made in the Outlands, for an
award I was honored to receive (Queen's Cypher, from the hand of Slaine).
It's absolutely stunning work, and quite frankly, is way better than
anything I'm capable of doing... but I'm a lot closer to that level of work
than I was before I started painting charters, 5 years ago.  :)

Zubeydah Jamilla al-Badawiyyah