Still life, not so still [Shadow Cast]

[Leo Varniak]

Timestamp: 58th day of Fall, 512 AV The harbor He had arrived early in the morning, carrying the tools of this particular trade. He had claimed the spot with the best view on the piers while not getting in the way of the dock workers, busy as they always were with the loading and unloading of cargo. In truth, he had been fascinated with Riverfall's port from the very first moment. Too bad he couldn't put it on canvas from the amazing perspective of an approaching ship. Even if he could book passage just for that purpose, all the rocking and rolling, the spraying water and the mist would make painting on board all but impossible; the vista here was almost as good, though, and he wasn't even sure he could do it justice anyway. Leo Zaital had painted from a very early age, but he'd only recently moved to canvas and oil paint as his medium. Raised in a family of potters, he had received training in how to paint porcelain with the most gorgeous enamels, tracing swirling patterns and abstract contours all around high-quality dishes and teacups. When he had gotten older, but not old by any means, he had started taking on more complicated projects, painting cartouches on a set's centerpiece or particularly expensive tea sets. A cartouche could get pretty artistic, but as a young apprentice he had limited himself to the usual subjects for the most part: fruits, birds, trees, countryside scenery, and so on. A porcelain painter had a very keen eye for detail, and was technically dexterous, being used to wielding extremely thin brushes on curved surfaces, but canvas posed very different challenges and he had only recently made the switch. For one, the area was so much bigger one could get lost inside. Secondly, he wasn't painting for profit anymore. When your aim was to sell a dish, you needed your work to be bright-looking, well-shaded, idealized but still within the boundaries of realism, and not too personal or experimental. It needed to be endearing to the customer, something they would want to dine in. Fruits were always round and ripe, shiny near the edge. Flowers bloomed all year round, and you were expected to paint twelve of them, all identical, on a given tea set. Unless you were a big name aiming for the rich collector, you weren't supposed to do anything really novel. Now, however, Leo could paint to his heart's content, and the freedom felt equally liberating and disconcerting and he had been suffering from the blank page syndrome, finding it hard to begin. The two media differed in more technical aspects, as well. The brightness of enamels was not easy to replicate with oils, giving the work a completely unique look. It would take a long time getting used to, but Leo had come to the conclusion that what he'd done as a child could hardly be called art. Art was what he wanted to do now. Normally a very analytical person, he found incredible relief in this hidden side of himself. Engrossed in the creative act, when time lost all meaning, he was at peace. There was no struggle, no burden. Now that he lived on the emotional edge due to his marks of Ivak, art could make the difference between keeping his sanity and losing it for good. He was going to capture an impression of the Plunge Pool Bay, with the Sea Gates on the far side, piers on the left and the wild cliffs of Riverfall on the far right where the baywatch observation post resided. It wasn't going to be easy, but then again if it had been easy everyone would be doing it. He started by tracing the major lines with a piece of charcoal as a very faint guideline. He mixed the paints on a makeshift palette until he was satisfied with the color of the sea. The inner bay gifted seawater with a peculiar highlight that would be hard to reproduce, but he wasn't aiming for perfect realism. It was a sensation he wanted to recreate, the liquid motion of the ships on the water, the turbulence of the bay, the way the sea went about its eternal business, uncaring of the hustle and bustle of people on the land. He began with the water, adding highlights and shadows as he went on. The sun rising on the other side of the harbor made things marginally easier. The piers only appeared at the far left of the painting, thus reducing the need for human figures - his weak point as he'd never really had any practice doing them. Any bodies would be highly stylized and pretty much part of the background. They would writhe like worshippers around the sea, which was the true protagonist of this piece. And if it ended up looking very bad, he could just come another day and try again. Leo Zaital kept on dancing with the brushes and felt all the rustiness and inadequacy to the task, but tried not to let it bother him. He lifted his head every now and then for inspiration. He was frowning lightly in concentration, but otherwise cared not one bit for the world around him. Unaware of the voices around him, he had entered a state of isolation from the universe which was a requirement for him to portray it in any way. Almost nothing could pull him back from that half-meditating state. Almost.