By Baroness Jervisa Wainwright, OP
Let’s face it, as perfect as we would like to be, mistakes happen at the worst time. Here are some tips to help you get through those frustrating moments.
Spelling Errors
When I miss a letter or two, I stop, say a few choice words, take a breath, and then walk away for a couple of minutes. Trust me, walking away to calm down after making a mistake is key. It is easier to think when you are not flustered with the frustration and emotion of “having screwed up.”
How to fix it? My go to solution is the “etching method.” Write the correct letter over the one you want to replace and then use an X-acto blade to gently scrape the exposed parts of the old letter, with the flat of the blade, so that the correct one remains. You will want to scrape a little, erase over the spot and brush away the debris to see if any more scraping is needed. The goal is not to completely remove all traces of the unwanted letter but to reduce its image so the correct one can be easily readable. Once you are satisfied, you may want to burnish the spot to make it smooth again. It will not be smooth enough to callig over, that is why you make your correction before you remove traces of the old letter.
If you have finished the calligraphy and discover you have left out a letter, a good “period save” is to put a “~” character where the missing letter was supposed to go. It is also good to use if you want to eliminate a letter to make a word fit on a line.
EX. …we bestow upon her all rights and responsib˜lities attendant…
In the event you wrote the wrong word, series of words, or feel you really mucked up the spelling or wrote the wrong line, and it is too large to an area to use the etching method, I would use the Latin word “VACU.” Draw a line through the wrong words. Write “VA” over the beginning of the wrong wording and “CU” over the end.
Ex. …we bestow upon him the rights and responsibilities attendant upon VAhis rights and responsibilitiesCU…
Some people like to use what I call, “the white-out method.” Master Ranthulfr Asparlundr has instructions for a corrective paint technique to cover small mistakes published in the “Middle Kingdom’s Scribes’ Handbook” (www.midrealm.org/heraldry/forms/MKScribesHandbook.pdf). I have never tried it, but if you would like to give it a go, you can find it on page 66 under the heading “Fixing spots by painting over them”. Whatever you do, do not use actual white-out. I did that, once, in my early days and it may have covered the mistake but no matter how many coats of paint you put on it, it remains shiny. You do not want to draw attention to something you are trying to hide.
Drips and Spills
These are the two most annoying problems scribes suffer occasionally.
Drips happen when the nib is too full to hold all the ink and then before you know it, BLOP! Do not panic! The first thing is to soak up the ink. Do not wipe! All you will do is smear a small problem into a large one. Take some paper towel and dip a corner of it into the ink drip and let it wick as much up as possible. Once you have wicked as much of the ink up as you can, walk away and let the remaining ink dry. If the drip happened on a part of the page that has not been worked yet, look at the back of the page. Does the ink stain deep into the paper/ground? If it does, then I suggest you do not try the etching method stated earlier. The best “save” I have found is to paint a decorative doohickey over the spot and then do the calligraphy around it as if it were meant to be there all along. If the drip is over the calligraphy, once again check to see how far the ink has seeped through the page. If it looks like it has not seeped far then try the etching method. If it looks like it may have soaked halfway or more, you might want to try and paint over the word or letter in a decorative style to hide the drip. Often, drips occur over the unlettered portion of the scroll.
Spills have a tendency test a scribe’s patience. Once again, do not wipe. As above, using paper towels, wick or blot up the excess ink. If you need to blot, make sure you use a clean paper towel to avoid stamping the ink all over the page. The option of painting over the spill is still an option if it is not too big. If that is not an option, but the illumination is saved, you can carefully trim around the artwork and paste it over another page. You may also do a little decorative painting around the edge of the cut-out piece to hide the fact it is two separate pieces. I have not had to do this myself but have been told it works very well.
To prevent drips, always test your newly filled pen on a scrap of paper to make sure any extra ink blobs are off before you start on the real thing. I also give my pen a little bit of a shake to make sure it is free of excess ink. You can avoid the problems of spilling by making sure you hold the inkwell with one hand as you extract the dropper from the bottle. This, inevitably, is when the dropper catches on the side of the bottle and before you know it, ink is everywhere.
I hope this helped you to better deal with those annoying problems that sometimes come up when making court scrolls. The main thing when these problems arise is to “Keep calm and forge ahead.”