[Scriptoris] Talon Competition at Steppes' 12th Night!

[Penelope de Bourbon]

Good day, fellow scribes! I wish to remind you that we are having a charter
design competition at Steppes' 12th Night celebration in about a month. We
have had some common questions, and I wish to reiterate those answers and
give resources in case anyone has been considering trying their hand at
charter design over the holidays. There is a most excellent selection of
articles on the Ansteorran Scribes website that walk you through designing
a charter:
http://scribe.ansteorra.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=55

1. What do I bring to the competition?      A completed, blank, inked
charter. We are looking for you to bring in a charter that looks an awful
lot like the blank ones you get handed to paint. That means it should NOT
be painted or in pencil or on graph paper, although you are more than
welcome to make a copy of your inked entry and paint it as an example to
show the finished product. Your charter MUST be the proper size already. My
suggestion is that if it's a wee bit off, talk to a friend in graphic
design or consult with someone at Kinko's who can help you take a high
quality scan and get it sized just right on the page. PLEASE remember to
give yourself generous borders and an instructional section that will be
trimmed off. That means that your entry should be on an 11x17 piece of
paper with a about 2" of border on each side of the design PLUS extra room
for the instructional section that gets trimmed off. If you have any
questions or need any help on this at all, feel free to ask me offlist.

You also need to bring a completed release form for us to use your
completed charter: scribe.ansteorra.org/resources/release%20form.pdf  (I'll
try to remember to bring some blanks with me.)

2. What goes into that little instructional section that gets cut off?
You should tell us a few things. First, what manuscript your design was
based on. This is really helpful for scribes who want to understand color
schemes or design motifs when it's their turn to paint your charter design.
Second, we need to know what paint colors are appropriate to the design
style you chose. If you're not very familiar with color names or which
color palettes go with which illumination style, look at similar charter
blanks to your design or ask me. Third, any special instructions for
illumination, like that the acanthus leaves should be gold or that the
space behind the big initial should be painted with a whitework pattern.
Finally, we would ask that you would include a short calligraphic exemplar
of both upper and lower-case alphabets in the style of calligraphy you have
used for the charter. It's an enormous help to the person trying to match
your calligraphy when writing in the name of the recipient, dates, etc.
This isn't a requirement, but it's something we would like to start
including.

3. What are the words that go on there? The pdf of approved texts is here:
heraldry.ansteorra.org/docs/award_text.pdf  If you're unfamiliar with this
document, note that near the beginning, there are tables of approved
variations for things like the opening phrase or how one addresses the King
and Queen properly. The award text for the Sable Talon is on page 42 and
includes the badge.


If you wish to try your hand at designing a Sable Talon award for our brave
fighters, we would be overjoyed to have you compete! The winning design
will be printed and put into circulation along with a few other fresh
designs of existing awards. I'm sure we are all looking forward to having
new designs to paint and new ways in which to be inspired to serve our
beloved Ansteorra with our creative gifts. Email me directly with any
questions you have that I haven't answered.

In Service,
Penelope de Bourbon