[Job Thread] Coloured Canvases

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 16th, 2016, 3:33 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Aislyn had an awful lot of freetime. A truly terrible amount, really. It didn’t occur to her often, and it had only occurred to her recently, but in truth Aislyn did very little with her days. Her days were spent working on commissions or drawing something for herself. Often she wrote in her journal. Occasionally she went out to the Bazaar to purchase food, or spices, or something else. Her nights were spent much the same, albeit with a different face. Sleep failed her most days, so she had even more time to waste waiting for inevitability of Dira’s embrace.
Now again, she just thought about that very thing. If she had so much time, surely she must have been doing something wrong. What was she doing now? What did she do before?

Then again, that was a loaded question. Before what? Before she began drawing as a profession, before she started drawing in the first place, or something else? Before she was marked by Ionu, or before her mother went insane? Before she tried to throw herself off a building, or before she locked herself inside and painted the windows black? Before her life ended, or before her life began?

That was another thing Aislyn often did. Thought. And thinking was never fun.

So she had decided to pick up a hobby. A hobby the artist had tried- and failed- multiple times before to do that exact same thing. Painting. She’d always loved the endeavour of paint on canvas, yet miraculously her charcoals had always appealed more. Perhaps it was the comfort of familiarity, or perhaps the woman was just too busy finding excuses not to pick up the brush to get it over with. But today she had woken up and felt different. A reminiscent, vaguely energized kind of different. Perhaps it was from the fact that she had actually been properly attempting sleep in the past fortnight, rather than giving up on it at the first sign of resistance. A cheap ale seemed to help a bit, though no epiphany of drunkenness could cure the disease of the mind. But nevertheless, instead of waking up with a hangover, Aislyn woke up with a need to paint.

At the first sign of light- a sign that had steadily grown later and later as the days dragged on into winter times- the woman had set out to the bazaar, walking about aimlessly until she had eventually come across what she was looking for. Though granted, what she was looking for was not exactly found all in one place. There was a peculiar stand drenched in all sorts of colours like an artist’s imagination had been spilled upon it, then another that sold the more technical pieces of an artwork puzzle. She’d browsed for more than half a bell by the time she was signaled out by a tender and offered what could be either a waste of mizas or the answer to all her problems. A book, covered in assorted splatters of paint. Aislyn’s first purchase of the day, and the one that turned out to be most useful.

Within the pages were haphazard script, empty papers stuffed within it or leafs of parchment sewn into the book with just a few words scribbled onto them, nothing but blank pages in between such entries. Some parts were utterly illegible, but what spoke most clearly were the pictures. Smudges of paint in different diagrams, sometimes mixed, sometimes kept pure. Some pages were completely covered in just one shade. Aislyn read it as she walked about the bazaar, skimming over the contents until something caught her eye. She was inexperienced when it came to mixing colours; she could name them to her heart’s content, but actually creating them was a different story entirely. She had planned to start with a simple red-yellow-blue, though her attitude changed as she read on. One diagram in particular was repeated several times over; one made of not red-yellow-blue, but more of a pinkish hue, a lighter blue, and a golden yellow. The diagram was wordless, but the images produced in between the dots of colour spoke loudly enough. They were more vibrant than what Aislyn had created before, and certainly more clean looking.

So, when she came across a man with a head of hair that mimicked the hue of the powdered paints he sold, she opted for the colours she saw to match the ones on the page. Then, paint binder and a toolkit full of brushes, and she was ready to actually figure out what exactly she’d be doing with her time. Of all the times she'd dabbled in painting before, she'd never given it what the artist would call a proper attempt. Throw some paint onto a canvas and hang it on a wall, or perhaps paint a six-armed woman on a rooftop at sunset. Vague attempts, of course. Never had she felt such a renowned vigor for the topic, and now she acted upon it.

Basket full of boxes and pots in all shape and size, Aislyn contently chose a direction to walk in and hoped for all paths to lead back home.

ledger :

[867]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 18th, 2016, 1:09 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Aislyn had a rule for navigating the Alvad streets. At day she always took right turns, whilst at night she always went left. Occasionally she was met with streets that went in four directions, in which case she always went straight. By that rule, Maya always turned right, whilst Thief always went left. It was a strange thing to think about- “Maya” was never seen at night, while on the other side of the coin “Thief” was never out in daylight. Only Aislyn had ever crossed the distinction, between light and dark. A shade of grey. Just like everything else, of course. That meant Aislyn had a choice, left or right or forward, whichever way she did choose.
That being said, Aislyn was never out on the streets in the first place, so such a choice never came to be a problem. That did beg the question, though. Which way would Aislyn go, if given the choice?

Bemused by the thought, Aislyn nearly walked right past her abode by the time she realized she had arrived. Stopping short on the path, she fiddled with the string tied around the basket. A soft violet, braided around the handles. Pulling on the loose piece, Aislyn undid the small knot. Wrapping it between her fingers, Aislyn pulled the small string of beads around her wrist with the other hand. Idly, the woman twisted the string around the bracelet before the key posed between the beads finally found its way into the lock on the door. Alvad keys always had an affinity for the locks they were made for; when one piece finally found the other the magnetic pull lessened for a moment, as if contented.

Pushing open the worn wooden door, Aislyn was met with the sweet sound of slightly sour notes in the warbly voice of her mother. The tune carried no particular pattern, no chorus or bridge, but it was music all the same, she supposed.
Closing the door with her elbow, Aislyn set the basket down atop the table in the center of the room. Tying the purple string from before around her finger in a small bow, Aislyn went about unpacking her supplies. First the book, which the artist took to reading while she removed the small pots of pigment from the sides of the basket. Then the binder, and finally the wooden box at the bottom. Flipping through several pages of various paint splatters, Aislyn found the next instance of writing. The book quite clearly wasn’t meant for reading, especially not the reading of someone that was not, in fact, the writer. Recipes for homemade paints in a crawling, light script.
Skipping the lists of various useful plants, minerals, and the occasional insect, Aislyn found a small drawing that just barely fell beneath the threshold of making sense. A small drawing of a pot with some sort of stick in it, lines drawn from the lists of ingredients to the sketch. Beneath it, more disheveled words. Instructions for mixing, though how Aislyn was supposed to measure ‘parts’ was unclear. Presumably any cup would do, so the artist momentarily left the table to scour the cupboards for any sort of container she could use.

In a way, mixing the paint felt a bit like cooking. Aislyn had no real experience in either subject, but the combining of ingredients held a sort of resemblance. Apart from, of course, the fact that she didn’t plan on consuming any piece of her artwork at the end of it. Combining the powdered dye into a larger bowl with the “measured” binder, Aislyn added the same amount of water as binder and stirred with a makeshift rod in the form of a meat skewer until an unappetizing but brightly coloured paste began to form. After repeating the same process with the other two colours, Aislyn had something that at least resembled paint. The consistencies varied rather drastically- the magenta was thick and lumpy while the yellow was more watery, and the cyan seemed much brighter than the other two- but they seemed usable, at least.

Wiping her fingers off on a piece of tattered cloth that had once been a pair of black pants Aislyn had given up on after they had been destroyed the previous winter, she moved back to her basket to unpack the toolkit. Unlatching the wooden box, the artist removed a small wooden pallet along with a few bowls and brushes. Moving a bit of the cyan and magenta to the pallet with the handle of the skewer, Aislyn began with a medium sized brush. She didn’t really have a purpose or direction to go in, nor any real experience with mixing colours, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Perhaps she was inexperienced, but even still, art was her escape, and it was there she was most comfortable.

As she mixed, Aislyn went about pulling the worn curtains across the windows. The sun was slowly making its way to the top of the sky, and Alvadas was languidly coming to consciousness again. That meant more people roaming about outside, and the illusionist had never enjoyed the idea of outsiders looking into her home. Once the windows were covered, Aislyn admired the light that shone through the thin fabric without allowing anyone from the street to actually see through. For a moment, she considered releasing her illusions, but eventually decided against it. Painting always felt more natural for ‘Maya’, even if it stole a sliver of her concentration away.

Balancing the skewer on the wooden platter atop the blue-red concoction, Aislyn used her free hand to remove one of the smallest canvases from the toolkit, setting it in the somewhat limited free space on the table. Setting the paint down aside it, the artist moved her basket and toolkit onto the two chairs beside the table. Now she had something to paint on and something to paint with.
Now all she needed to do was figure out how to paint.

[1,003]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 18th, 2016, 2:36 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Almost as soon as she had everything lain out in front of her, Aislyn came to her first problem. All her previous work had been in the medium of charcoal and paper, not canvas and paint. Colour was almost entirely unknown to her. Of course, she’d experimented with coloured charcoals before, but those were of a design made by a person Aislyn no longer believed to be among the living, which meant they were a rather rare sort. Thus, the woman had barely touched them since she’d first received them, and they still resided almost entirely untouched within a locked chest at the foot of her bed. Even then, charcoal didn’t blend the same way paint did, and it was hard to visualize how colours would interact with each other.

Soon enough the intermingling pink and blue became a sort of in-between indigo, though it was rather light considering what Aislyn had in mind. Momentarily abandoning the mixture, the woman moved over to the chest she kept the majority of her belongings in, smoothly unlocking it with the second of the two keys that hung around her wrist. After a bit of rummaging, she found a small jar of black paint and its corresponding white near the bottom. Previously, she’d tried imitating charcoal with greyish pigments, but it hadn’t exactly been a resounding success. Since then the mixtures had been sitting at the bottom of her possessions, unused, but now it seemed they would be rather useful after all.

The paints were a slightly different type to what Aislyn had in mind, but they did their job well. The black darkened the blueish combination to something at least close to what the artist had planned, and from there she went to spreading it onto the canvas. Colours might not carry through between mediums, but, as Aislyn painted, she found that texture most definitely did. If she held the brush at an angle so only the side of the bristles struck the canvas, she could move in a way that was similar to drawing. Except messier, and quite a bit less controlled. But kind of similar, in a way.

A few brushstrokes in, there was a knock at the door. From outside, Aislyn could hear her mother speak from the other side of the entryway.
”Dearest, could you open the door? It seems I’ve misplaced my key again.”
It was the same mantra the artist received every time her mother was locked outside. The ‘lost’ key was, in fact, in Aislyn’s possession, and since they actively only owned one, it was just a matter of making sure the illusionist made it home before her mother need worry about getting inside. Turning the handle, Aislyn pushed open the door to allow her mother entry before turning back to her work.

”Ah, dearie! I see you’re working on something new. You wouldn’t have happened to see my daughter anywhere around here, would you? I have something to show her.”

The change in tone was evident once Aislyn’s mother stepped in through the door. Aislyn had noticed it before, of course. Aislyn was always ‘dearest’, but Maya was ‘dearie’, and Thief was less predictable. After all, it was rare Thief was ever around at the same time her mother was, anyways. Usually it was a passing conversation whenever Aislyn came home from a nightly walk. The illusionist had never really understood how her mother saw her illusions. They weren’t quite separate people, as her mother never questioned why there were strangers in her home, but they weren’t quite Aislyn, either. Maya wasn’t her daughter, nor her ‘dearest’, but she was still affectionate enough to refer to her as ‘dear’. Then again, as long as Aislyn was never chased out with a broom under the pretense of being a stranger, it didn’t really matter.

”I’ll be sure to tell her.”

Fully intending to wait her mother’s attention span out, Aislyn continued on with her work. The elder woman made her way across the room, setting a small covered basket down on the newer of the two beds in the room before sitting next to it with her legs crossed as if waiting for her ‘dearest’ to come home. Soon enough it became evident that the woman wasn’t going to move anytime soon.
Sighing, Aislyn released Maya, turning towards her with half her attention still on the various lines and crosses she was making on the canvas before her.

”Did you need something, mother?”

The brush made a pleasant scratching sound as it made contact with the paper, forming small swirls of blue that Aislyn added to in different shades of the colour she’d created. At first there were just lines, populating the corner of the canvas. Then there were swirls of the same blue, making patterns on the backdrop of lines. At one point her brush dipped too far into where she’d originally mixed the blue to make it lighter, making small lines of white dot the swirl.

”Oh, darling, I’m so glad you’re home. I went shopping today- for some breads and meats you know, you know,” Jumping up from the bed, the woman waved her hand at the statement, as if her expedition was meant to be self-explanatory. ”But then, oh! Dearest, I passed the most exotic vendor, and I just had to see what he was selling, you see!”

Half-listening to the conversation, Aislyn focused more on the small hair on the paintbrush that had fallen out of place, leaving tiny lines of white in the otherwise blue paint where Aislyn hadn’t meant to actually make any sort of mark. She glanced over to her mother every once in awhile, just to see what exactly she’d gotten so riled up about. The woman went about unwrapping her basket, pulling the layers of the blanket off its top before she could actually reach whatever it was below it.

”I’m just a silly old woman, I know, but this time I’ve gotten something for the both of us.”

Setting her paintbrush down, the artist decided she ought to humor her mother, considering the fact that she the way she was setting up this ‘surprise’ seemed to be in a very similar manner to the way Aislyn had heard her mother set up many other ‘surprises’, most of which involved some sort of new collection the woman had decided to begin. Once it had been leaves in incandescent colours, then small glass fruits that had dissolved like the illusions they were. Rarely, the ‘surprise’ was alive.

This, unfortunately, seemed to be the latter of the situations. Pulling her hands triumphantly from the basket, Aislyn’s mother produced what appeared to be a rather disgruntled ball of fluff that had quite obviously been sleeping before it was so rudely awakened.

"You see, I've always known you wanted a cat. Ever since you were a little one you'd always go on and on about it," She paused to use the hand that wasn't holding the cat to tap her forehead. "I never forget, you know, you know."

As far as Aislyn was aware, she had never asked for any sort of animal in her lifetime. She had never found the appeal. Animals were needy, messy, and the majority of them hated Aislyn upon sight. Of course, the feeling was mutual, though the illusionist's feelings were more of an intolerance rather than the animalistic fear she'd imagine the useless creatures felt.
With a strained smile, Aislyn tried to mentally list all the things her mother had forgotten. Perhaps she was bitter, but more often than not any sort of ill-will she held towards the woman were essentially useless. It was like being mad at the city for not arriving somewhere on time. The city didn't care, and most likely didn't even hear you.

The fallacious statement regarding her mother's memory, however, was not the strangest part of the puzzle. Beyond the fact that the animal had been brought home at all was the fact that it was actually a cat. Aislyn had gotten rid of many the animal that was not, in fact, a cat, no matter how much her mother believed it to be, but that.

Meeting the slitted eyes of the animal, Aislyn observed the thing smugly nestled in her mother's arms.

That was most definitely a cat.

[1,396]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 19th, 2016, 9:12 pm

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Maria Leavold had a history of becoming attached to assorted small creatures, most of which were some wild sort that she caught roaming in the general vicinity of Aislyn’s abode. She had a history of somehow managing to capture anything from a racoon to some strange sort of giant armored rodent Aislyn had been forced to shoo out of the house before it did any real damage. There was a racoon, once, another time a rat. A few times, there had been birds, though only Ionu knew how an aging woman that had long lost a sense of reality managed to catch something capable of flight for long enough to entrap it in her house.
There had once been a pretty red songbird; a finch, or a linnet, it didn’t matter. It had become so panicked at its ensnarement in the tiny house it had flown at the walls, the windows, the roof. It had struck the ceiling time and time again, until it began to leave red smudges the same colour as its feathers against the wooden surface. Then it had attacked the windows, battering its broken wings against the glass until it lost the ability to fly. After that it had just sung, a trilling call that Aislyn had found most startling when she had come home to find the walls stained with small impacts of red and a poor sod of an animal lying with its bones fairly visible, strewn across the sill. The illusionist had snapped its neck, burying the body in a shallow grave beside her mother’s wilted garden.
It had been a mercy killing.

This animal, however, appeared to be in perfect working order. More than that, it didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that it was, in fact, in the arms of a madwoman who didn’t exactly have a history of being courteous to the animals she brought. It was well kept, too. The fur was trim and clean, its coat a short black with no obvious blemishes. This wasn’t a cat Aislyn’s mother had picked up off the street.

”It works out well, too!” The woman made a long gesture with the cat, draping it over her arms like some sort of exotic shawl. ”I made sure- you see- I made sure she would be the most darling cat, and good at catching mice, too! You know, I’ve seen more than one disgusting little rodent running around in here. I think you forgot to close the door, and they all came scampering in.”

Sticking an accusing finger at a small crack in the wall, the woman gave her daughter a pointed look. Aislyn had never noticed any sort of mouse problem, but when she followed her mother’s gaze she appeared to be right about one thing. Theoretically, the small indentation in the wood near the floor could fit a rather slim mouse through it, though the question of whether or not a rather slim mouse had ever actually done such a thing was another story. Either way, she most definitely hadn’t left a door open in the first place, so it didn’t matter. What did matter- and what was piquing Aislyn’s interest at the moment- was, once again, how her mother had come across the cat in the first place.

”Mother,” Picking the paint brush back off the table, Aislyn made a face at the stain it left behind. ”It’s a fine… Animal,” How to say this? ”-but where did you find it?”

Placing the disgruntled feline delicately back into its basket, Aislyn’s mother patted its head before answering her daughter’s question. ”Find it? Oh, dearest, no. I would never just pick something off the street like that. I bought her.”

Starting back at the swirls and lines, Aislyn dipped into the blue colouring for a fresh start. She knew exactly where this was going, and was already preparing herself for the bad news. A cat. Expensive, but not terribly so. It didn’t seem particularly exotic, either. Twenty mizas, maybe. Fifty at most.

”A real steal, really. Just two hundred gold!”

[687]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 19th, 2016, 10:16 pm

20th of Fall, 516 AV

”I think I call her ‘Aislyn’.”

A small droplet of blue paint fell down from the brush, rushing to meet the canvas and landing with the unfortunate resting place of right in the middle of the otherwise blank parchment. The only other marks had been in the top corner, but now there was a splatter of blue in a place where there most definitely should not have been. That was one of Aislyn’s problems with paint; she wasn’t too terribly good at being precise yet. Her- rather limited- art style so far was more of just painting whatever abstract shape came to mind at any particular point in time. There wasn’t as much direction as she had with her charcoal.

”Mother, you spent two hundred gold-rimmed mizas on something unnecessary.”

It was hard to make anything like she imagined it, with paint. Colours never quite mixed in the right way, brushstrokes never quite fit onto the page in the right direction. There was a lot less control, and that was perhaps the worst part. Aislyn couldn’t make exactly what she wanted appear exactly as she wished onto the page, in a way she could with charcoal. The lack of experience was annoying. No matter how much she wanted to be good at something, she couldn’t just wish her way into being better. The issue came with having to put in work to make it there, and the artist would quite frankly just rather skip to the part where everything came out right.

”Oh, don’t be like that! You spend so much on your little arts and crafts, why can’t I buy myself something every once in awhile? And something for you, no less! You can be so ungrateful, I don’t know why I try.”

Wiping a strand of hair away from her cheek, Aislyn mourned the fact that she couldn’t tie it back anymore. It was always getting in the way, especially now that the weather was a tad bit more blustery. The wind always blew it every which way, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was only once the artist felt the paint just below her eye did she remember that her hands by now were dotted with stains of blue. It was just like the charcoal, only more colourful.

”You’re not calling it that.”

Her tone grew impatient, though Aislyn’s concentration never left the canvas. Not once did she look up from her work. Not to meet her mother’s eye, not to adjust her posture, bent over the table in an awkward position. Not to justify her argument, nor to aggravate her mother’s. The most emotion she showed was her reluctance to say the word ‘Aislyn’. She’d never liked the sound of her own name. It was like a forbidden word; like a child prohibited from cursing. It was a dirty word, one that had an effect more like nails on a chalkboard than a useless noun.

”What, Aislyn? Oh, but Aislyn is such a beautiful name! I’ve always wanted to name something Aislyn. Like a plant. ‘Aislyn’ seems like such a good name for a plant. A flower. What kind of flower would ‘Aislyn’ be, do you think? I’m thinking a rose. Or a cat. Aislyn is a good cat name.”

A muffled sound came from the basket sitting on the bed. The thing that was being so hotly debated decided to actually show itself, clambering out of the small enclosure to pad around Aislyn’s mother like it was looking for somewhere to sit. It curled up beside the foot of the bed, stretching out its paws with a yawn. Already, the thing seemed to be making itself at home.

”Stop saying that word, mother.”

When she spoke the cat looked up, regarding her lazily. Then it sat up again, walking about in a circle before facing towards the table Aislyn worked at. It tilted its head, blinking at her slowly. It didn’t seem to be a particularly vocal cat, though if it were anything near worth the mizas it had cost her it would be trained. Trained ment obedient, quiet, and good at its job. Aislyn couldn’t just get rid of it at this point- two hundred mizas wasted wasn’t exactly an appetizing offer- but if the cat was staying, it had better be the most charming thing known to Mizahar. Otherwise, the animal would be thrown out the first chance Aislyn got, mizas be damned.

”Oh, but I love the name! Aislyn, Aislyn Aislyn Aislyn. It rolls off the tongue, dearest, it really is lovely.”

Unfortunately, the cat didn’t seem to get the memo about being thrown out onto the street, and proceeded to make the daring leap between the bed and the table. It made it in one piece, of course, but the table being already packed with various supplies didn’t exactly bode well for a safe landing. The panicked animal missed its target, instead sliding into the canvas Aislyn stood above. The artist just barely managed to grab the paint she was using before her work slid into where the bowl had been ticks earlier. Her other hand went for the canvas, which managed her a handful of scraped paint and a rather malformed painting as a result. The canvas itself fell at her feet, adding yet more splotches of colour to the once-black boots that had been already managed to be stained in paint, despite how little Aislyn used the medium.

”I wish your name was Aislyn. Then I'd get to say it whenever I'd like.”

[933]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 25th, 2016, 12:43 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Staring down at the ruined parchment, the artist felt a certain anger tightening her chest. Pettily, she lobbed what paint she had scraped off in her hand at the cat that had caused the mess, receiving an angry hiss as a result. It didn’t matter what the cat thought of her, really. It would end up hating her either way- as most things did. She’d never had any sort of affinity for animals, though as a naive child there was no doubt she had tried. There was some sort of sense that mundane creatures had, a sense that tipped them off to the fact that Aislyn wasn’t quite human in the way that most humanoid creatures didn’t feel. An animalistic sense. After all, Zith weren’t exactly known for being the most friendly of creatures. If anything that could find itself marked as ‘prey’ could sense that, then all the better for it. It would probably survive longer that way.

Picking the canvas up off the floor, Aislyn took a closer look at the ruined spirals. It was apparently possible that there was a shape more featureless than random lines and circles, and that was what Aislyn had now. It wasn’t orderless in a good way, either. It looked like exactly what it was; a ruined piece of canvas.

Looking down from the smudged paint on her hands to the smudged paint on the canvas, Aislyn found her house to be, for once, far too small. She’d never had much of an opinion on the difference between large, open spaces and secluded, smaller ones, only that the place with more peace was the better one. Her abode had always been humble, and she’d never had a problem with it. But that had been an abode for two people, and now it was an abode for two people plus a furry little shyke.

”What about Elohssa?” It was a bit of a losing battle, but Aislyn managed to maintain some sort of semblance of calm as she set aside the ruined materials in hope of eventually starting again. ”Isn’t that a good name?”

Aislyn had learned over the years that directly facing anger by diving headfirst into it was the quickest way to lose said head, and was almost exclusively a bad course of action. So she’d get her vengeance on the stupid cat in her own way; by naming it what it quite obviously was. And she’d learned from some very unfriendly enemies she’d made over the same years that the best way to name something was to just take what it was and spell it backwards. Like a snake.
Or an asshole.

”That’s the spirit, dearest! Elohssa! Elo-hassa. Hassa is a nice little nickname, isn’t it?” She turned to the cat, sweeping it off the table and into her arms. ”Do you like that, Hassa?”

The cat meowed gaily, jumping back down onto the floor, the mess on the table forgotten. Leaving blue footprints across the floor it followed the woman speaking to it, obviously much more of a fan of Aislyn’s mother than Aislyn herself. It didn’t matter that it had been Aislyn’s mizas to purchase it, or Aislyn’s canvas it had ruined. All that mattered, apparently, was the fact that Aislyn’s mother didn’t see the useless thing as what it was.

A cat.

ledger :

[560]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 25th, 2016, 12:46 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Seemingly content with the fact that she had convinced her daughter and her newfound pet to get along, Aislyn’s mother left the abode, half humming and half singing a nursery rhyme of some kind as she left. She didn’t go far; the woman was easily visible through the curtains of the front window, sitting happily in front of her garden, pulling at the stem of some poor plant.

Turning away from the window, Aislyn settled her gaze on what was left of her canvas, sitting spectacularly ruined atop the table in the center of her kitchen. The paint was smeared on every surface it had touched, colouring everything from the floor to the table to Aislyn’s boots and the paws of the cat that had caused the whole mess. The paint, ironically, appeared to be everywhere but the canvas, which now had glaringly obvious holes where the colour had been scraped off by what it had fallen upon. She’d have to take a rag to the stains at some point, but if she were entirely honest, Aislyn didn’t really care. Paint made things more colourful; more lively. If it were spilt all over the floor, it made it less boring. Gave it character.
Or, at least, as much character as plain would could have.

Looking down at her hands, Aislyn found herself to be as covered in paint as the canvas, confused combinations of blue and black spread along the crevices in between her fingers. For a moment, she wondered at how she was supposed to go about painting without mixing the colours and staining everything she touched. Her question was answered with a sudden thought, to which Aislyn immediately dubbed a good idea. With one, slightly less paint-covered finger, the artist held the canvas in place. Her other hand was used to drag down the canvas, leaving a gradient of blue and white down the blank material. She repeated the process with her other hand, creating two five-pronged pillars of colour down the canvas. After that, she took two fingers and smoothed out the colour that had been smudged at the top of the piece. Returning to her brushes, she covered the fingerprints with smooth strokes, leaving a more cohesive image.

Tilting her head at it, Aislyn tried to figure out what about it she didn’t like. She didn’t like the way the blue now took up not only the corner, but also the center of the canvas. The corner needed to be a different colour if the center were to be blue, but that meant the rest of the page would require paint too, and that meant she needed to decide upon a colour. Looking down at her pallet and then to the unused paints on the table, Aislyn contemplated her choices. Removing a fresh paint brush from her toolkit, she dipped the bristles into the magenta, pulling it up onto her pallet. Setting that brush back down into the bowl, she then used another to take an approximately equal sizing of yellow and mix the two together, At first the yellow was more overpowering, forming a brown-gold combination that was nothing like what she was looking for. Then more of the magenta seeped in, and it formed a much more pleasing red.

All in all, the paints seemed to mix very well with each other, forming an unusual metallic complexion that was very appealing. The higher price had most definitely been worth the quality Aislyn received. Choosing cyan, magenta, and yellow instead of the regular primary colours had paid off as well, forming much more pleasant hues than what Aislyn had been left with in her previous attempts with paint.

Expanding the circle of red outwards, Aislyn used the paintbrush already coated in blue to smear the blue corner downwards, almost meeting the handprint-esqe smear in the center of the page. Then she added the red, beginning in the farthest corner. Taking far more paint than she would have logically needed, Aislyn tried to encourage the red to drip down into the blue in a more natural way than brushing it would have given. The mixture of the thicker magenta with the lighter yellow had granted an uneven texture in the red, and what did slide down the canvas was more oil than dye, leaving no real trace of colour in its wake. Resigning that idea, Aislyn followed the measly drips down the parchment, echoing the blue but stopping before it was taken over entirely.

The blue, of course, wasn’t entirely dry, and muddled the bright red colour in the wetter places, creating a violet that seeped onto her brush and confused the pigmentation wherever it touched. Perhaps she should have waited a bit longer before continuing.
Stepping back for a moment, Aislyn looked at what she’d done. The picture itself was formless, a symptom of her not having drawn out any sort of design before beginning. The shading- or lack thereof- was also rather bland, creating no appearance of depth. The colour was nice, but that could be attributed to the quality of paint the artist was using, rather than the skill of the artist herself. Overall, she wasn’t sure about the appearance of it, but the creation thus far had been enlightening, so what did it matter if the piece sold or not? Perhaps she’d just hang it somewhere, and leave it be. After all, what didn’t sell often ended up on her walls regardless of the quality Aislyn perceived them to be of. But she could worry about that later. It would probably help to bring the piece somewhere near completion, rather than think about selling right at that moment.

Switching her red brush out for a black one, Aislyn was about to attempt the solving of her shading problem when her mother came back in, harboring an armful of wilting flowers. Practically skipping into the abode, she knocked the door closed with her foot before beginning to drop the plants one by one atop Aislyn’s supplies.

”These grew nicely, don’t you think, dearest?” The petals of the flowers crunched as more were added to the pile, protesting the added weight. When all were accounted for, her mother clapped her hands together, pleased with her work. ”I believe I’ll need to get some new seeds, to replace the ones that have bloomed. What do you think? Roses, perhaps, or daffodils! I do love daffodils.”

With no regard to her unanswered question, she was off again, snatching Aislyn’s coin purse from off the top of the chest by the illusionist’s bedside before she was out the door. At first the woman considered going after her mother, before deciding against it. With the way the recent seasons had progressed, Aislyn had been wary to carry anymore than a handful of gold mizas with her wherever she went, a number of which her mother carried with her now. If the elder woman had too much freedom, she might come home with something worse than seeds.

Like, for example, another cat.

[1,178]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 27th, 2016, 12:20 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

Now alone, Aislyn prodded at the dead flowers with her paintbrush, leaving streaks of red where the bristles touched the petals. They weren’t a lost cause entirely, at least. They were drooping and rather sad looking, but the petals were still attached at the stem. There was a respectable beauty in the plants, from the sepia-toned way they appeared when contrasted with the colours around them. They were bigger flowers, peonies or roses or a mixture of the two. Pink, once, or perhaps white. Either way, it was faded now. The heads sagged and curled, wrinkling and dry like it had been left out in the sun for too long. For a moment, she regarded them. Perhaps her mother just had a different taste in beauty. They were pretty, of course, in their own way. There was nothing particularly wrong with them, either, they were just… Different.
Different, in a dead way.

Dipping her brush back into the crimson paint, Aislyn dripped the colour onto one of the roses, picking it up. Cautious of the thorns, she turned the stem between her fingers. The red slipped down the petals, weaving its way through the lifeless brown to the stem, where it slid slowly onto her fingers. Dragging the bristles along the flower, Aislyn coated the faded colour with a brighter, more vibrant tone. Rotating the flower so she could paint the back, the artist brushed away the stray drop that hung from the edge of the petal. The red curled down her fingers like it did the stem, collecting on her knuckles. She was new when it came to painting; nowhere near her mastery with her sketches, though that prior experience certainly helped. Yet still, she received the same feeling with a brush that she did with a charcoal stick. A certain, special place, where no one could touch her. It was what she was good at, what she had worked towards. It was her living, and her life.

Her art, and her illusions. That was what her life was.

Setting the flower down on the table, Aislyn moved automatically, picking up the next one. This one didn’t have thorns, and though she was no expert in defining the species of plants, it was fairly obviously not a rose. There were more petals, though they seemed more fragile. When her brush pushed down, one snapped, floating down to land beside the reddened rose. More delicately, Aislyn brushed along from the inside out. The occasional dip into the pallet sitting beside her momentarily abandoned work richened the colour. Sometimes she went too far into the pink or yellow, creating patches of different shades. From one flower to the next she moved, until she had a bouquet of tinted plants. They were tiny canvases, tiny blank slates to be filled. They wouldn’t die like normal flowers would, because they were already dead. They had fulfilled their lives as living things, pretty until their short lives had withered away. Then they had died, and Aislyn had made them into a new kind of beautiful.
It was quite relaxing, really.

Gathering the flowers in one hand, Aislyn turned the dripping bouquet as a whole around, touching up the places where the paint had come off on the table. From beside her, her mother’s cat meowed, having grown bored of being shut in the household without her owner for so long. Waving her foot at the animal in an attempt to dissuade it, the woman was met with a hiss. Ignoring it, Aislyn continued her work.

The petals of the flowers drooped with the weight of the paint, their bright new colours giving them a distinctly artificial feeling when combined with their dying appearance. Setting down her paintbrush, Aislyn supported the bunch with two hands until she reached the cupboard, using one hand to hold the flowers and the other to open the cabinet. Her finger left red prints on the handle, as well as on the glass of the item she removed from the shelf inside. A small vase, with which she dipped into the wash basin to fill with water before setting the flowers inside. An arbitrary motion, of course, given that dead plants didn’t need water, but it didn’t matter much either way. The water, of course, turned just the slightest bit red with the paint that dripped down the stems to meet it. It was a strange decoration, but it was a decoration nonetheless.

Pushing a few of her supplies closer to edge, Aislyn cleared enough space on the table to place the vase right in the center. Flowers. And not even living ones, granted. But they “brightened up the room”; that was what flowers were meant to do, was it not? A huddled mass of wilting art projects didn’t quite bring “bright and cheery” to mind, but in some strange way Aislyn liked them. Liked them a lot, actually.
Perhaps her mother was onto something.

Turning her attention back towards the real canvas, Aislyn found herself looking up to the flowers every so often. They were messy and they weren’t pretty in the traditional sense, but that was how much of the illusionist’s art was. The namesake of Alvadas was beauty in peculiarity, and that much was very, very evident in the artwork Aislyn created. Fantastically, marvelously, simply, Alvadas. Creativity in every expression, art in every illusion. Wonderfully, magnificently, clearly Alvadas. For some reason, that was what Aislyn felt, looking at an unremarkable bunch of dead flowers.

It was the little things that count.

[929]

by **Aislyn Leavold** on November 28th, 2016, 10:59 pm

20th of Fall, 516 AV

It was a good half-bell before Aislyn’s mother returned. In that time, Aislyn had turned her attention from lines and swirls to proper shapes. Simple, smooth flower shapes in red across the white of the unmarked canvas below the dripping blue. It would have been better if she hadn’t added the red to the top, coating the blue, but she couldn’t take the paint off now. She didn’t want to crowd the image in colour, but the paint was just so enjoyable to use, she was almost tempted to cover the whole thing with as many coats as she deemed fit. The main obstacle in that course of action was the time she’d have to wait for the paint to dry in between coats. That, unfortunately, was a task made for people far more patient than Aislyn herself.

The door had been unlocked for Aislyn’s mother to get back in without assistance, Aislyn herself being doubtful that anyone would attempt to rob the place with someone inside. She entered the abode again rather energetically, pushing open the door with a force that startled Aislyn into nearly dropping her paintbrush. Instead only a few drops escaped, splattering against the canvas silently to create two new red dots against a contrasting background. Sighing, Aislyn began to turn the mistake into another one of the flower shapes, smoothing over the drops into lines that more resembled the petals of the flowers currently suspended in a state of undeath within the vase nearby.

Her mother clapped her hands together as she entered, none the wiser to the ruckus her coming had brought upon the otherwise silent household. Clapping her hands together the woman dropped a small pouch onto Aislyn’s workspace, in the same place she’d deposited the flowers before. The bag appeared to be Aislyn’s coin purse, only now it was full of small seeds instead of mizas. Because of course it would be.
”They’re poppy seeds, dearest! A whole bag full! Oh, the seller was just the most darling woman- she told me all about how these beautiful little things will grow.”

Nudging the bag open with one end of her paintbrush, Aislyn found the seeds not to have replaced her coins entirely, instead simply placed in a rather invasive heap atop them. Now the bag was filled with a mixture of flower seeds and mizas, neither of which Aislyn expected to grow very well.
”’Plant them before the winter comes,’ she said, she did. ‘They’re proper Alvad poppies, grow red and blue and orange and red as soon as spring comes around.’”

Aislyn curled her brush around the shape of what somewhat resembled a flower. She still wasn’t used to the blindness of painting without having a sketch behind it first, but she was at least getting somewhat recognizable figures. Brushes weren’t the same as charcoals. Brushes were strangely uncoordinated, no matter how smooth her painting felt on the canvas. The paint glided easily and stained the image easily, yet it still gave her no indication of how the end product would look before she had actually reached the end. With her charcoals, she always had the ability to practice beforehand. She could do warm-up sketches, plan an outline if she were serious enough about getting it right. She often drew guiding lines as light as she could manage to make sure no irreversible line went askew. If she were lucky, she could even smudge away mistakes to fix where she’d gone wrong.
With painting, she didn’t have the same luxury.

”We’ll have big, bright flowers in the spring- won’t that be lovely? Sometimes I think this city needs more colour.” The woman paused, considering. ”Big flower gardens, all over. That would be absolutely splendid.”

The bristles of her paintbrush twisted as she moved, bending until some began to escape and scratch red outside of the flower shape it was meant to stay confined to. It happened several times- unruly brush hairs escaping to make stray dots of colour where stray dots of colour did not belong. Smoothing the brush down with her fingers didn’t seem to help, nor did pulling out the uncooperative hairs herself. All she received for her efforts were fingerfuls of red paint, staining her hands crimson. By now it seemed everything- not just Aislyn- was covered in some sort of colour. The table was stained black and white, the cabinet boasting fingerprints in a bright red. Even the bothersome cat- who now took up the majority of Aislyn’s bed as it slept- had speckles of blue dying its coat and paws. The floor still had imprints from where the canvas had fallen, not to mention Aislyn herself. Her hands were as much a display of the paint as the pallet she’d used to mix the colours in the first place, her boots and sleeves also fresh with red and blue. She hadn’t done much painting, and already her home was beginning to show signs of it.

In a way, Aislyn appreciated the colour. All of her sketches were in black and white, the walls covered in layer after layer of art the woman had created over the years. Some were from an Aislyn that had been too young for her to even remember creating the images. The oldest ones were little more than scribbles, while the newest were pieces Aislyn would have liked to call her best. Anything that wasn’t in her journal and wasn’t a commission went up on her wall; flowers, animals, people, places. Illusions and ideas, anything that came to mind. Her favourite one recently was one of a puppet, a drawing redone of a sketch she created nearly two years prior. It had been a commission for Kuvarakh, when he had employed her. Based off a book in the Sunken Conundrum, detailing the god she now knew to be Sagallius. Before, the drawing had been simple, an example of her inexperience. But since then she had learned much more about the way light played across objects, the way shadows were cast and the way textures worked. The puppet looked like it was properly made of wood, hanging limply from the strings held by a hand unseen. The only thing Aislyn had disliked was the way she couldn’t make it seem to be alive. It hung without emotion, like its thoughts were as wooden as its body. Granted, it was a wooden puppet, but it was also encased in a drawing. In a drawing, she could make it do whatever she wanted.

That was probably the best thing about her growing ability with art- she controlled what she put on the paper within good reason. As long as she knew how to do it, she could make it appear, craft it out of her imagination and place it on the paper like it had always been there. Her ability to draw gave things two-dimensional life. In a way, her gnosis was just the same. Illusionism was like a mental drawing; a three-dimensional art piece that came to life before her eyes.
Rather, not her eyes, but the eyes of others.

Aislyn’s illusions were the only form of art the woman created that were for the eyes of others, rather than herself. Even her commissions were twisted to be seen through her eyes, to be created in a way that might not have been expected by the consumer. But Aislyn created her illusions to be seen by others, and never to be anything more. They were not to be looked into, were not to be scrutinized. They were not to be investigated and not to be looked through.

They were to live, and to be left to live. Illusions were her life, after all, and though it was not a life she would recommend, it was certainly one way to live.

[1,315]

Ledger :

by **Aislyn Leavold** on December 1st, 2016, 2:34 am

20th of Fall, 516 AV

The painting was rather unimpressive.
Aislyn had spent a rather long time on it, all things considered, but even past that it was little more than a flurry of colours, decorating the canvas in vague shapes that hadn’t exactly come out as planned. The flowers, plainly put, didn’t look like flowers. Red smooches, smudged about the blue and white and black in seemingly random haphazardness. They were more lopsided crimson circles than anything else, some just a little bit too close or too far away from the next. The blue that Aislyn had never had a vision for in the first place had moved into the wetness of the other colours, making new hues that didn’t complement in the way they were meant to. In the opposite regard, what was meant to mix together and form darker shades stuck apart, obviously not meant for the same approach as charcoal. But it was a decent first attempt, the colours still pleasing and the vague semblance of pattern just out of reach. She had enjoyed it, more than anything else, and it seemed painting would be something she’d have to come back to in the future.

Once, Aislyn had thought what she’d needed was a visit to the Acumen, after a brief investigation had led her to learn the institution offered more than one class regarding the arts. She’d found a list of names and prices, a few hundred gold rims and she’d be taught by a professional. Brought in to be tutored in the finest of places with only the slightest connotation of insanity. She’d be a pupil of an esteemed teacher, and probably learn things she’d never discover on her own.
And yet, it had been nearly two years without so much as a visit.

Every time Aislyn had found the Asylum in her path she’d turned the other way. At first it was mere procrastination, then it became something more. Instruction from a teacher was something Aislyn simply no longer found necessary. She was an adult. She had never attended schooling in her life, never taken a class of study or sought an education she couldn’t provide for herself. She’d learned from her mother, from her mentor- once, in a different time- and from Alvadas itself. On the streets, in the temple, even just sitting somewhere in the quiet and listening to the city breathe. Ionu had raised her, first and foremost, before anyone else had. The Acumen was unnecessary. She could figure things out for herself. She’d learn to paint like she’d learned how to do everything she knew- alone. Drawing had been a skill she’d picture up quickly, why would painting be any different? So days had passed- seasons, even years. She’d never taken a class, never even entered the building again. She grew determined to prove she didn’t need anyone else, for anything. Ever.

Aislyn set her paintbrush down atop her pallet on the table, taking a step back for a moment. There was no room on her walls, but perhaps she’d make room. Canvas, was obviously, quite a bit bigger than parchment, and four walls housed only so many works of art. Already, there was barely a scrap of blank wall to be found. Most days she simply stuck the drawings wherever they fit, whether it sacrificed the drawing below or not. It was an evolution. Some of the very first still showed through, but most of the oldest ones had long since been covered. Yellowing and browning paper, some torn or damaged by water. Some were crumpled whilst others were pristine.
All, however, were hers.

”My! Look at this!” With the seeds put to the side, her mother had come up behind her. At first, Aislyn swore she was about to receive the rare compliment from her mother regarding her art. But her gaze was followed not to the canvas, but rather to the flowers sitting in the center of the table. ”Dearest, the flowers! They’re beautiful!”

The woman caressed the petals of the still-wet plants, small droplets of red falling onto the table. Her hand came back red, the paint coming off and revealing the wilted texture beneath it. Of course, she paid no mind, plucking one of the flowers from the vase and cradling it in her hands. She swung about the room in a grand waltz, the drooping stem taking the place of a partner in dance. She moved and dipped as Aislyn took a seat on her bed, leaning back against the wall as her mother amused herself with the plant Aislyn had decorated. Closing her eyes, she tried to will away the edging of exhaustion weighing on her senses.
From the darkness behind her eyes, Aislyn felt her mother’s hand on her head, herself flinching in response. The flower the woman had been dancing with was pressed into her chest, small smudges of paint left on the base of her neck from the touch. The illusionist's hands wrapped around it slowly, her fingers finding the thorns more readily than the stem.

”I do love you, darling,” Her eyes were a bright blue, wrinkling at the edges with her smile. They were so unlike Aislyn’s own; red and dark and unforgiving. Hers were light, happy. Aislyn moved her eyes away, breaking her gaze.

”I know.”

[890]

Completed [Job Thread] Coloured Canvases