Solo Faces in the Night

[Taurina]

Late Evening, 18th of Fall 516

It was not dark yet, Syna still hung low in the sky casting the world in a soft purple and orange light. Taurina enjoyed watching the sun set more than she enjoyed watching it rise. Leth would be lighting the sky soon and her ethereal body would return to her once more till the night ended. While Taurina was slowly getting used to the two forms of herself, she still preferred the Eth to the Drykas and likely always would. The former form was strong, beautiful, and graced by her god while the later form was damaged and broken. It was the form of a life that Taurina struggled to connect with and find again. Whoever she had been as this person was lost to her. Only scars, windmarks, and scattered memories remained.

Taurina laid on the grass, resting back on her elbows as she gazed at the sunset. It truly was beautiful. Syna surely did know how to make an exit. Never was she the exact same. The patterns of her light was always cast differently and it was unique in each of the places she had been while traveling. No two sunsets were ever the same. Taurina never did pay enough attention to know if that was the same for the sunrise. It likely was, but she was always preoccupied with the shift and her moments of getting reacquainted with that body to pay attention. She always knew the Drykas form was coming, but she likely would never stop having those short moments of hoping she was not going to change.

The last moments of the sunset were always the most beautiful. Slowly the pink, purple, and orange lights would fade from the clouds and then everything would be grey for a time before darkness fully fell and Leth’s light was what colored the sky. The shift took place in a matter of ticks, the brilliant Ethaefal left in the place the small Drykas had once been.

Taurina twisted her neck back and forth, stretched out her body and became readjusted. Fingers flexed, bare feet bent down and then up before toes spread. Leg and arm muscles were tested out and fingers were stroked through long, crimson hair. It was common practice for the Eth to retest out her body each night after the shift as if she was checking to see if anything had changed. It never had. This body was always healthy and strong, sustained by Leth alone during the dark hours of the night. Taurina spent her night hours outside mostly, if she could, as it was a way to get close to him.

A smile broke out across Taurina’s face before she fully laid on the grass with a relieved sigh. Crimson locks pooled around her head and intermixed with the vibrant blades of grass. Her golden horns were on the same level as the back of her head, resting against the flat plain land. It was a position Taurina enjoyed during the early hours of Leth’s reign. She could see him rightly this way, bask in his light here. The idea that this early in the night others were awake and might see her did not bother her. Most knew by now and those who did not would find out soon enough. To hide went against the promise she made to herself when entering Endrykas so she refused to do it.

Taurina offered the truth about her race to anyone who asked now. Even if they did not know about her kind and did not understand it, she tried her best to explain. It could be convoluted and she understood that. She was patient because she truly did love her Ethaefal form more than her Drykas form and to the people it frequently did not matter to them. The Drykas had held the attitude that as long as she was useful, it did not matter what she was. A peace of mind was brought to her when she realized that. It had been one of the first things Injal had said after hiring her and since then she has tried to be useful to them in both forms.

[Taurina]

As was normal in her nightly routine, Taurina brought out her journal and charcoal. Tonight she had fished it out earlier than what was normal for her. Usually she waited till the very latest hours of the night when she was sure everyone would be asleep. It was not that she feared people seeing the poorly drawn out practice sketches and judge her because of them, but more that they’d see her seemingly doing nothing. In a place like this there was always something to do. Especially with today’s warning from the elders of the place. It spread throughout the tent city that winter was expected to be especially hard. Some prayed for fruitfulness in their gathering and hunting, others went about storing food.

Taurina was not sure what her solution was going to be or what she was going to do. She was not part of a pavilion and she did not have the knowledge to go about providing a whole winter’s supply for herself and Melody on her own. Fear threatened to take over so she had done the only thing she could think of to protect herself from it. Avoid it. For now at least. It was not the smart solution and her inner conscious told her that much, but her mind had not spun out of control yet. She still had time to seek out help and gather some knowledge. It would be okay, she had to trust that it would be okay. The alternative was just too gruesome to even entertain.

Taurina turned to an empty page in her journal and ran fingers gently over the parchment. She shook the charcoal piece in her hand back and forth in thought. The color rubbed off on her fingers, but that was normal and easily washed off. Taurina was often too lost in her own mind when it came to her sketches that she did not mind the color left on her skin as a result of creating them.

Hands began to move. One steadied the journal in her lap while the other began to draw lines. Taurina first drew an oval shape in the center of the page. The oval was longer than it was wide, but it was not an extreme oval shape. More on the circular side of things with the bottom half narrower than the top. Once the base was draw, she went in and started creating a sharper, more pointed look to the bottom side of the oval. Others perhaps would go about this another way, but Taurina had little training and most of her work was trial and error.

The Eth drew a shallow, curved upward line about an inch away from the now more defined bottom of the oval. To pair with this line, a top part was formed to meet with it. The top line rippled purposely in the middle, creating an almost bow shape. Taurina filled in the lips with a faint line in the middle and some shading to make them actually look like lips. A small space beneath the bottom lip she drew two fainter, more straight lines to define the bottom half of the oval, creating more of a chin look to it.

Taurina moved up towards the top of the oval. She had not previously drawn guides, so she was working on her own and what she saw. First she drew two very faint ovals within the bigger oval. These were wider than the were long and there was a space between them as well as space between the big oval and the edges of these smaller ovals. The Eth started at the top of each of these ovals and began draw short lines one after another that tapered off towards the side curve of each of the ovals. These lines created eyebrows, looking frayed at the top where they were separated and then more smooth towards their end. Each went in the opposite direction so that they truly did represent the eyebrows of a real human face.

Next came the eyes. These took more effort on Taurina’s part since she did not know much about how to shade them or ever create them. Eyes were very complicated in that they had a wet look to them along with multiple parts. It took chimes for Taurina to decide how she wanted to draw the eyes of her face.

[Taurina]

Taurina started at the bottom of her guide ovals for her eyes. The first thing she aimed to create was an accurate shape. Eyes looked sort of like a tear drop on it’s side. They were wider towards the nose and then thinner towards the outer part of the face. Everyone had different eyes, the width was different and proportions changed from person to person and race to race. They also changed depending on expressions and emotions. The general shape stayed mostly the same though so Taurina settled on just trying to create some generic eyes for her face for now.

The first goal was to create the teardrop on its side shape. That was not too hard. Taurina started with the bottom half and just mainly followed the guide circles she had created. Then she shifted up to the top half of the eyes. When she was done, they did not match, but they were close enough that she did not make herself start over. The shapes were wider towards the center of the face and more narrow and pointed towards the outer rim of the face oval. Taurina then went in to add an extra line on the inner part of each of the eyes.

This line swooped inwards into the main eye shape, but formed a curve bubble to represent the pink part of the eye socket. They were not well drawn, but did a decent job of shaping the eye more realistically. Having this part of the line also made Taurina happy because she wanted her eyes to have all the parts eyes should have. The Eth then went to create the actual eye part of her eyes. Circles without top or bottom were drawn in her teardrop eye sockets. Within those circles, other circles with no bottom or top were drawn. At the very center, the pupil, small near perfect circles were created and shaded in completely black.

Taurina did not know how to go about shading her eyes so they looked like they were wet like true eyes looked. With her lip being bit down on in thought, the Eth decided to forgo making truly realistic eyes. She would ask Jarorra possibly how to make them more real looking later. Right now she just wanted to get her basic shapes down. So she went about shading in the irises with a soft grey color, accomplished by using the thin side of her charcoal stick. The first circle that she drew was left the color of the parchment, being the white of her eyes. The inner corner of her eyes, that curved line she added after drawing her main eye shape, was shaded an even lighter grey with a small darker bubble in both at the bottom. Where Taurina believed the tear ducts to be.

After the basics of the eyes were completed, Taurina went to create the lashes. She thought these would be the easiest since in concept they were just narrow lines that were just barely wider at the bottom and thin at the tip. They were not easy though because she realized that she had to shape them. The bottom ones were suppose to look like they were curved downwards while the top ones were suppose to look like they were curved upwards. Tarurina frowned at her first bottom lash, created on the right eye. She had just drawn a straight down, tapered off line. It did not work, there was no curve. It did not look like an eyelash. The Eth groaned. While she had not expected this project to be easy, she had not expected the amount of difficult it was turning out to be.

Taurina changed her perspective of the sketch and went in with her head tilted more to the side so she could get a more accurate line for her eyelashes. She drew them faint at first in case they looked just as poor as that one ugly bottom lash on her drawn right eye. She frowned every time it got caught in her line of vision. That was how much failure disappointed her. These new lashes however worked out, curved and and curved down. They were a little too think and when she went in to darken them they were just made thicker, but the concept was at least there. Next time would be better.

[Taurina]

With now lips, eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows all done, Taurina moved on to her face’s nose. The nose she knew would be hard from this facing forward view. Noses were all different, just like eyes. Technically everything about faces were all different, but there were some things that were just basic for all faces. Taurina started her nose up where the eye guides had been drawn. She drew faint curved lines down and ended them in a rounded off bubble shape. That was to be the top of her nose. It had a short of flipped up appearance as she started to draw in the lines to create the nostrils.

Curved lines were sketched off the top of the nose. She shaded to make the nostrils look like an endless abyss of darkness within them with the color of the parchment being the cartilage in the middle of the empty nostrils. Lines branched off to create the outer layer of the nose and Taurina felt like that was not as hard as she expected. She was happy with her nose and went in to shade in that little spot between the nose and lips were those two indented spots were. That did not take her long so Taurina took a moment afterwards to see where her face was.

The Eth cringed slightly internally when she saw the eyes she had drawn. They were by far the worst part of her face. The lips were alright, the chin looked like a chin and her nose was decent. Even if the nostrils had been shaded in a little too dark. Her eyes though.. they were uneven and flat looking. There was hardly any dimension to them at all and it was obvious how different they looked from each other. The eyelashes were horrendous despite looking better than they would have had she continued with the first one she had drawn. Taurina sighed, knowing it was just an attempt and her first attempt at that. She should not have been so hard on herself, but she was. She always was.

Taurina moved to her cheeks and shaded them in dark, making them look curved inward with higher cheekbones. She added some speckles to color the bridge of the nose and cheekbones with freckles. She was at the point now where she just wanted to be done. The eyes looked horrible and she could not get over that. Even with the rest of the face not looking bad for the beginner that she was. Those eyes just ruined everything for her. Some creases in the face’s forehead were added to give it a distressed look before Taurina moved to the ears.

The Ethaefal only created the left ear, planning on having hair come over and cover where the right one would be. The ear was created to look like an upside down egg with no inner side where it connected to the face. Taurina moved away from the ear a moment to give the side of the face a more rounded, three dimensional look. She did this by shading around where the ear was and around the whole of the face. It did not look great and was still very flat, but Taurina had lost a lot of her ambition by this point.

While ears could be complex to look at, the one on Taurina’s sketch was fairly simple. She just aimed to put the basic pieces of the ear in hers. The little piece that shaped over the hole, some of the ridges that made the inside of ears uniquely shaped, and the outer lip of the ear which was shaded to look like it was over that area of the ear. Once it was done, Taurina did not focus on it and moved on to the hair. She wanted at least that to look right.

The first step was to create a simple outline that she wanted the hair to follow. She wanted to give her face a simple, loose braid to one side of it’s head. So she created a faint line to be her outline. It formed a few centimeters above the actual face and came down in a tapered off triangle shape over where the face’s shoulder would be if it had had one. Taurina went in and also created a curved triangle shape over the face’s forehead that came to just above its right eyebrow. Those would be filled in to become bangs.

[Taurina]

Taurina’s first step with the hair now that it was outlined was to shade in the whole area. Since her eyes did not have accurate shading, she did not worry much about the accuracy of her colors. It was all grey in color and she planed to make the inner workings of the braid darker to make it look right. Taurina focused on the top of the head first though. She shaded with the side of her charcoal like she had with her blade of grass first. Then she went in to create lines that would represent the various strands of hair. These were dark lines, thin in width, and there were many of them right after the other.

Taurina made them all go the same way and softened her outline by letting her new lines of hair come over and cover the outline. Her hair was wispy towards the ends and framed the face in a soft sort of way. She added in some strands over the left side of the face, adding some bangs over there along with some shorter strands of hair over the showing ear. It did not look half bad. Flat in color, but it looked alright. Taurina moved over to the braid, which was going to be the hard part for her.

Since the outline was already there, the first step was to create faint V shapes in the middle of her braid. Those would be where the darker shading would go to create her braid look. Taurina worked on making her outline more loose and messy looking, curving it so it looked like a braid. She had wisps of hair coming off of it and made the bottom of the braid look like a cluster of short hair tied with a ribbon. Once this was all done, the center of the braid was worked on. By the light of Leth, Taurina focused hard on this part. She wanted it shaded correctly.

Curved lines of charcoal came together to form more strands of hair that appeared like they were being woven together. Where the V shapes were, Taurina shaded in the grey color darker to create the illusion that the strands really were being woven together. After taking many chimes to create her effect and then more chimes to see it come through how she wanted, Taurina smiled at her end result. The hair looked much better than the face. The Eth looked at the whole of the sketch, satisfied with what she had accomplished and glad that it was over.

The Eth was determined in that this sketch would never see the light of day or that anyone would see it, but she was happy with what her unknowing hands had created. Even with everything in the face uneven and the eyes looking as horrible as they did. Now that it was done, Taurina added in some curved lines starting from the jaw area of her face and curving outward, becoming her neck. She shaded to give it the dimension that would match the rest of the face and then closed her journal. That was enough for now. It was growing late in the night.

Taurina got up to her feet and gathered her things. All were placed in her pack and she went back in her tent to place the pack there. Then the Eth went out to her mare, saddened when she found Melody asleep. Of course the mare would be asleep, she did that through the night. Most everyone around here did that through the night. It was rare that she felt it, but every once and awhile she did. A certain loneliness creeped up upon the Ethaefal. When it came it was hard to shake off, hard to distract herself from it.

With a sigh, Taurina found another space among the grass. There was the chirps of insects and the rustle of small animals. At least they had not left her yet. Fall had not yet taken them all away. It had been too hot for all the insects to die off. Taurina gathered her legs and pulled them close to her chest where she rested her chin on them. She looked up to Leth and tried to take comfort in the fact that he was here. She knew though that she had been closer to him and that made her lonelier. Things were not the same and she was not sure that they ever would be again.

[Khida]

Taurina

Skill	Points
Observation	+2
Sketching	+5

• Anatomy: variance in eye shapes
• Anatomy: visible features of the eye
• Drykas culture: accepts all people of use
• Sketching: drawing and shading a braid
• Sketching: eyes and eyelashes
• Sketching: the lines that define a face
• Sketching: many lines to indicate hair

Notes

I really like the detail and focus Tarina spent on her drawing's eyes; it seemed enough to merit its own lore. It's also nice to see that she's getting happier with her work... bit by bit.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding this grade. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.