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Plate 1:  The Heraldry Guy's workplace
(This plate added DEC 2004)

HE accompanying photo shows the workplace of The Heraldry Guy. Whenever he works at this location, The Heraldry Guy's personality fractures down the middle into two distinct sub-personalities (personas):

  • the artist persona, and
  • the pedant persona.
    		•
    When The Heraldry Guy is actually drawing and painting pictures of heraldic symbols and animals, he finds that he is temporarily unable to describe, in the correct terminology, the things that he is drawing and painting.

    Likewise, when the poor fellow is describing (in the absolutely correct terminology) those things that he has drawn and painted, he finds that his artistic inspiration temporarily evaporates.

    --more--

    		SUBJECT: Heraldry Guy's workplace CAMERA: Sony DSC-P92 Cyber-shot MEDIA: Sony MSA-64A Memory Stick at 1.2 megapixel resolution FILE: JPEG from Sony Image Transfer version 1.00.1015.01 EDITING: Adobe Photoshop
    In other words, when he is drawing or painting a thing, he can't describe it correctly. Similarly, when he is in a frame of mind whereby he can lucidly describe a thing which he has previously drawn or painted, he cannot draw or paint until he departs from this state of lucidity.

    Thus it is fortunate that The Heraldry Guy's personality is alternately split in two. If he didn't possess two distinct, mutually exclusive personas (artist and pedant) at different times, he wouldn't be able to do anything at all, because the two halves of his personality, if permitted to emerge at the same time, would be in a constant state of deadlock.

    Observe that a multi-volume dictionary is partially visible at the right of the workplace. This dictionary is the exclusive domain of the pedant. The artist is not permitted to touch this dictionary. The reason for this is that the artist can neither read nor write, so that the printed words in the pages of the dictionary possess no meaning for him. Thus, the pedant guards the dictionary so that the artist will not randomly tear out the pages for use as scrap paper upon which to wipe his paint-brushes.

    To sum it all up: to be a complete Heraldry Guy, one must not merely be able to draw and paint the things that make up heraldry, but one must also be able to describe those things correctly and fluently.

    In order to describe heraldic symbols correctly, the pedant employs a special way of speaking or writing. This way of speaking or writing is known as blazonry. Blazonry is a way of describing, with unerringly consistent accuracy, the color, form and position of heraldic symbols within an heraldic work of art.

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