A first scribal attempt.

These images have been provided as a teaching tool.
Feel free to come back here and visit often,
but please do not "borrow" or reuse the images without written permission.
All rights remain with the originators of the work.

Please do not get discouraged by looking at the scroll examples on this site and thinking that you can't do this well. That would defeat the whole purpose of these pages.

Scribes come in many different skill levels.Yes, some are professional artists, but some are just students or homemakers too. Each and every producing scribe is an asset to the Society.

This is the first attempt of Aengus MacBain and Eibhlin ni Chaoimh (the scribes who's work is also shown on this site). There are many mistakes, but it was their best attempt at the time.The same amount of time was put into this seemingly simple tourney scroll as the Italian Renaissance scroll image.

The difference being practice and confidence.

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You may be asking yourself, "Well, what's wrong with it? It looks good to me".

Some of the more obvious mistakes are:

The colors...If you check the tips on the Celtic style you will not notice brown, screaming yellow or brilliant green recommended.

The knotwork...Knotwork should fill up a space as much as possible. In this example it is very thin and does not reach the borders or fill up the space as well as it could.

The calligraphy...It may not be terribly obvious in the image, but the guide lines were not erased behind the opening words. Yellow gouache has very poor coverage and the lines are now permanently set underneath the paint. On the original, they show through quite well.

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