NOVA Scribes

 
 
 

Grab your pencils and come celebrate your fondness for pencils in this fun, hands-on session. We'll start with your standard graphite pencil by making letters, then move on to colored pencils and watercolor pencils in creative and crafty ways.

Heather will demonstrate pressure-release graphite techniques by writing with various Blackwing pencils from the Blackwing Audition Pack: https://blackwing602.com/products/blackwing-audition-set-of-4-pencils?sca_ref=3375635.xHMmddG9NV

Sarah will show you different effects using watercolor pencils.

Tina will offer tips and tricks for enhancing your lettering using colored pencils. Please bring 3 complimentary colors for blending, as well as white and gray if you have them.

Suggested supplies and supplies used by the hosts:

• Graphite, colored and/or watercolor pencils
• smooth eraser (Heather uses Prismacolor kneaded erasers)
• pencil sharpeners (the Kum 2-step sharpener; a dedicated color pencil sharpener.)
• Paper: Something with s slight tooth like mixed media paper would be nice, but you might prefer something smoother
• black-lined papers or grid paper for under the bond paper to serve as guides.

Note: Heather will not be going into pencil sharpening or eraser comparisons. There simply isn’t enough time. She holds pencil-sharpening meetups upon request.

You can prep by watching Roman Hand in the free Unlock Your Neuland Markers course: https://www.letslettertogether.com/offers/L3KoRLzj/checkout
Print out the handouts as we will be using the 1” Roman Hand template as our guide.

And when you attend the session, you will receive a digital copy of Heather’s pencil exemplar as a gift and for future inspiration.

Links for inspiration:
Why the pencil is perfect: https://youtu.be/IBf9pXOmpFw
How Pencils are made: https://youtu.be/qqs3fxfmWr4
Blackwing Makers: https://blog.blackwing602.com/heather-martinez/
National Pencil Day: https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-pencil-day-march-30/

We'll have helpful resources for practicing pressure-release graphite. The Roman Hand Packet can be downloaded at:
https://www.letslettertogether.com/Roman-template
We will be using the guideline to create the letterforms.

A “study table” will immediately follow the event for anyone in the session who wants to keep going and for students at Let’s Letter Together.
Click here to join the Lettering Study Table:
https://www.letslettertogether.com/offers/izqzd6Py

 
 
 

Our friend and colleague, Lee Gimple is leading a fun, hands-on, 2-day training event. He will guide you in learning and practicing techniques from Liberating Structures. You will even see how these skills apply to small team meetings, community convenings, and large-scale events.

Please note this is being hosted outside of the Meetup App.

Click here for details, registration, and costs.

Want to know more?
Liberating Structures is an easy-to-use set of modern facilitation techniques designed around collaboration, equity, and engagement. Its inclusive nature lets groups actually hear from all voices and breaks down typical organizational constraints to spur true innovation. In addition, the techniques are easy to adapt to your own needs, so you can apply them to almost any situation where people work together. This method is used by professional facilitators, as well as in big tech companies (often in concert with Agile), grassroots organizations, and institutions like the World Bank.

Learn More about Lee Gimple
Lee Gimpel is an expert on collaborative facilitation and meeting design. He runs the Washington, DC Community of Practice for Liberating Structures and is the founder of Better Meetings, a meeting facilitation, training and design firm in Washington, DC. Building on a foundation of Liberating Structures techniques, he works with in-person, online, and hybrid meetings, conferences, retreats, and networking events. His work blends group facilitation, audience engagement, and human-centered design. As the leader of the Liberating Structures community in DC, he has provided dozens of trainings on LS techniques and also organized the 2020 and 2021 Liberating Structures East Coast Night intensives. In addition, he is the creator of the Conference Organizers Summit, an industry convening for event professionals.

Professionally, he’s worked with clients such as the US Department of Energy, the National Association of Realtors, and American Federation of Teachers. Before starting his own company, he was Director of Development for LifeWise Strategies where he led trainings and gamified tool-development for a wide variety of organizations. He's a frequent speaker and has presented for groups like the Reston-Herndon Meeting Planners and the Mid-Atlantic Facilitators Network. As an industry expert, he is widely quoted in the media on meetings and conferences, including in USA Today, HuffPost, Convene, Prevue Meetings & Incentives, Tradeshow News Network, and MeetingsNet. He writes a regular column for Forbes where he is the contributing expert on meetings and facilitation.