[Flashback] Laviku's Daughters [Private]

[Kikova]

Timestamp: Early Summer, 405 A.V. (Basically, before most of you all were born )

There were no other women, Konti, or even people that were more beautiful in Kikova’s eyes than her grandmother and mother. They were the epicenter of her life and the backbone of her spirit; only Avalis, surely, knew the extent of her love for them. And they were so gentle, so nice. They loved to dance, as well, and had taught this passion to Kikova from a very early age. On this particular day, the three of them had gone down to the shore so that they could dance with their feet bare and skimming through the sea foam. It was a favorite pastime of the women, one that was often followed by an evening of storytelling and friendly chatter. Certainly, Kikova would be asked to write and recite a poem about it later. Oh, how her mother and grandmother loved her writings!

This particular day, all three women wore similar dresses: long, flowing dresses the palest shade of lilac. They were simple and meant to enjoy the hot air of summer and remain comfortable. Shoes were quickly kicked off and Kikova’s mother took her grandmother’s hand and ran off to dance in the splashing of the waves. They were laughing and so youthful looking, being able to enjoy the near-appearance of younger girls. They danced hand in hand in circles, laughing as the water kissed their feet.

Her grandmother had gathered up the corner of her skirt with her free hand while her mother led the circle, their faces lit up the skies. The sun was just beginning to dip, though it was still a ways before nightfall, igniting the sky with reds, crimsons, and pink that stained the cerulean blue wonderfully. Clear, resonating tones harmoniously woven together hinted that the two were singing; Kikova could even recognize the tone and it made her smile.

Both women, actually all three women, had extremely long hair but Kikova’s and her grandmother’s was wavy like the waters on a calm sea and her mother’s was perfectly straight. All the locks were a shimmering shade of white. The colors of the sea, blues and greens, mixed with the palettes of the setting sun, reds, oranges, and yellows, to contrast their pale, snow-like skin beautifully. It was a breath-taking scene for Kikova and one that gave her pause.

[Kikova]

She had still not stooped to slip off her shoes so that she could join her mother and grandmother in the bliss on the waves. Praise be to Laviku for such beauty! She was too taken aback by the sudden beauty of the situation; her heart paused for a moment from the poignancy of the situation, her heart saturated with emotion. She wanted to capture this moment, to remember it for time eternal.

Kikova knelt quickly, reaching into her bag for her journal that she always carried with her. It was full of her usual things but her hand dug expertly through it to extract what she was looking for: her journal and a soft piece of graphite to sketch with. Her journal was one of the most important material things in her life and contained all the sorts of things that one might expect to find in a journal: bits and pieces of poetry, recollections of the day, dreams, ambitions, and fears! Also doodles and some more thought out sketches were etched into the pages.

Flipping to a clean, unused page, which was nearly the last one left, Kikova knelt down and steadied the journal on her knee so that she had an even surface to work with. She squinted up at her mother and grandmother, studying their movements. She knew that they must know what she was doing or they would have called out to her already to join them. She smiled. Her mother and grandmother were always encouraging of anything she did. Praising every poem and loving every painting. Even all of her sketches were cherished and loved. She beamed more intent now to begin to capture these women. Kikova brought the graphite to the paper and began to trace soft, long lines on the paper. At first they amounted to nothing, but slowly their form began to develop more and more clearly. Her mother was on the left and her grandmother on the right; her mother was reaching back with her right but her grandmother was reaching forward with her right, resulting in the two being joined together, fingers intertwined, but her mother’s body faced the sea, which was behind them, and her grandmother faced her. But both their faces were looking at each other. Kikova focused on the eyes and the mouths, trying to capture the love that was flowing between them. Her hand was still amateur but the effort was there, no matter the result.

[Kikova]

Kikova moved on to the rest of the picture, focusing on the dresses. These were a crucial part of the sketch and an aspect that would be challenging for her because they were being twirled around by both the wind and their dancing. They were one of the most stunning aspects of what Kikova wanted to capture, apart from the women themselves, and she spent a great deal of time on them. She used a light hand so the lines would be faint and airy. And she forced the lines to bend gracefully so the movement and the folds of the dress would be captured and remembered. She drew a few lines to indicate the folds of the dresses and depict the movement but also drew lines, and these were darker, that showed the shape and boundaries of the dresses. Finally she was satisfied with that.

With the faces, forms, and dresses complete, Kikova now had to illustrate the gentle roll of the waves as well as try and capture the sunlight behind them. This would be harder, as she was not using any color, but she wanted to get the details up there so she could commit it to memory. She focused on the waves, mixing hard and soft lines to capture the sea and the waves and smudging some of the lines with purpose using her fingers to indicate sea foam and the softness she saw in the water. It was far from perfect, but she contented herself with her work. And now she had to do the sun; Kikova drew a disk and behind the figures and smudged the line again with her fingers. Simple and amateur, but it was enough for her at the moment. She would remember.

Finally Kikova was satisfied enough with her sketch and was ready to go join her mother and grandmother in dance. She smiled broadly as she put her journal and graphite stick away already eager to show her family what she had created. Kikova knew they would love it but that they would also give her tips and suggestions to improve her skill. The sharing of art was one of the most enjoyable aspects of her life. Quickly, she shed her shoes, rose, and ran off to her mother and grandmother who responded warmly and included her in their dance. It turns out the song that they had been singing was a lullaby that her mother and sung to her since she was born. It was a delightful evening.

[Kikova]

Kikova was glowing with pride as she woke up the next day; her mother and grandmother had loved her sketch and praised her for how she managed to capture the emotion that was flowering between them: a beautiful, almost whimsical, joy that could only be shared with intimates. It was both familiar and eternal. Or at least that is what Kikova thought about it. They had also, as Kikova knew they would, given her tips to improve and her grandmother had even showed her some examples of how to draw waves and to capture the depth of the sea, making it seem like it was stretching back to a distant horizon even on paper.

She was ready to begin. Kikova was a lover of painting and had spent much of her childhood practicing and developing the art, making it the easiest and most natural creative outlet for her. And she wanted to capture and expand this sketch to a painting so that it that moment could be remembered in the vivd color it deserved. Kikova was excited. It was going to be the first formal painting she had ever attempted and the first time she was ever going to paint a serious painting on canvas. Kikova was eager to begin.

Kikova carefully cut a section canvas so that it was slightly larger than a square yard. She was going to have to stretch it so that it was ready to paint on and her grandmother willingly obliged to help. Younger followed the steps of the older, mimicking every action so that she could learn to do this herself. Together they constructed the frame that would hold the canvas and began to pull and secure it along all four sides. Once that was completed, which took a good deal longer than usual because Kikova was just learning the art, Kikova had a taunt piece of canvas ready to work with. At this point her grandmother stooped to kiss her on the cheek and left her to her work. Kikova appreciated this sentiment. While they were always willing to help, her family wished Kikova to experiment on her own and make her own mistakes so that she would be a better painter later.

[Kikova]

The first thing that needed to be done was to sketch her original sketching onto the canvas so she knew where to paint and what to paint where. This was easier said than done because Kikova’s sketching was significantly smaller than the canvas she intended to work with. She paused for a good amount of time while she thought what to do. It seemed a bit daunting so Kikova decided that she just needed to begin, focusing on one detail and go from there. She realized that blemishes and errors in the sketches would be covered with paint later, so she did not have to fear too much. Kikova decided on the hands, because they were in the center.

The hands, as she realized as she sketched, were the center of her painting. The focal point. They gave her a good idea where to draw everything else and how big because it was in proportion to the hands. Naturally, she made a few errors and had to go back and correct things many, many times. But the canvas was beginning to become transformed and her sketch was becoming enlarged. After hours of work, Kikova was finally satisfied with the work she had put on the canvas. But she did not want to stress herself out, so she propped it up in her room and left it for the next day.

Returning soon after waking and eating breakfast, Kikova felt refreshed and ready to begin the final stage of her painting, which was actually applying the paint. First, Kikova propped up her canvas with the sketch drawn on it onto her easel. She then reached into her wooden box in which she kept all her brushes, paints, and a painter’s palette. Before she could begin she had to decide where to start and then mix her paints. Paints rarely came in the exact color and shade that you wanted them! Feeling that consistency was a good thing, Kikova elected to begin where she had begun last time: with the hands.

The skin of her mother and grandmother (as well as herself) was exceptionally fair, like most Konti women, and very evenly toned. So it would save her some time because she could mix the same pigments for her mother’s and grandmother’s skin. Setting to work, Kikova pulled out the tube of white to begin painting the skin. Since her mother and grandmother were so fair, she painted on a base coat of white evenly on their bodies. Easy enough; all that was involved was painting in the lines. But it was so flat and two-dimensional! She wanted to express the fluidity of their bodies, showing how they curved and flowed over their respective delicate bone structures.

[Kikova]

She now squeezed out too more sections of white, smaller pools than the first had been. In one she added a tiny amount of red and yellow to give it a hint of crimson while the other she added a tiny bit of black and a bit of blue to add darkness yet color. Kikova also selected a smaller brush, one that was so tiny it only had a few pointed bristles. She dabbed this first in the crimson-tinged white and began to dab at the edges of the body that faced the yet to be painted sun. The effect was simple in intentions: she wanted to show the glow of the setting sun on their moving bodies as she remembered it. With the darker tinted white, hinted with a trace of grey and blue, she did the same on the opposite side of the bodies, where the sun was not hitting. The effect intended was to give shape as well as shadows. Setting her paints aside, Kikova selected her ink and began to faintly use it along the bodies to draw in the details. Not professional, but she was satisfied with her work.

Next were the dresses as they were close to the bodies. They were fairly simple and she used her remaining white on her palette and mixed in hues of red and blue, faintly, to make it a nice shade of purple! She was pleased at herself because the color was just the same as the faintest shade of lilac that the dresses had actually been! It had been much easier to do than the bodies. Next, she divided it into three sections and darkened one, left the largest untouched, and lightened another by adding more white. Now she was ready to begin. Kikova selected a wider brush with a sculpted end for texture and began to paint the dresses. She did this with sweeping strokes meant to mimic the direction the wind was going. That way the paint moved the way the dress was supposed to move, emphasizing the movement all the more. The dresses were easier in Kikova’s opinion and she soon found herself on the finishing touches, using the darker and lighter shades to add volume and depth. Satisfied, Kikova rinsed her brush.

Now she wanted to do the details of the face. These turned out to be very easy to do because they were such small details in comparison to the rest of the painting. It mostly required a lot of shading and layering to get the desired effect for the bones of the face. The eyes were to be the trickiest part. Only one eye of each showed and Kikova elected to make the attempts on her mother first. Her mother had beautiful azure blue eyes that would be hard to capture but would not require a lot of paint. Kikova took the blue and mixed a tiny bit of red to darken and add a hint of purple to them. Then she swirled in some blue to lighten them again as she changed her mind. Finally happy she dabbed it on slowly. It was passable, not exactly like her mother’s eyes, but they definitely bore a resemblance. Her grandmother’s eyes were a soft mint-green like her own, more matte than glossy. She took the green and toned it down with white to get the desired mint shade and dabbed it on as well. Kikova smiled. It looked exactly as it should.

The hair of the two women proved to be the easiest detail and she managed to do it with a small, wider brush using long, flowing strokes to capture the length of the hair. The brush strokes made the viewer’s eye follow them down as if it were a gentle lane and that was exactly what she wanted to happen. She was delighted with the hair and went over her paintwork carefully with ink to give the effect of waves and straight hair to the respective Konti. After much labor, the figures were both complete. Kikova could not help but smile at her work.

[Kikova]

Now it was time for the background. First things first, Kikova decided to get three basic colors on the canvas as her backgrounds to work with. She mixed a sandy-brown for the sand, a cerulean blue for the sea, and light, almost white, blue for the sky, though she left the circle where the sun would go unpainted. Using her widest brush, she painted these on to their respective location in long sweeping strokes. It was done quickly and efficiently enough. That was the last easy thing she would have to do for this painting.

She decided that the sun was the next most important detail for the picture and mixed the colors red, orange, and yellow together to get the exact shade for the sun she wanted. Using circular stroke motions, Kikova filled in the circle with this color. Then back to her palette. She divided the remaing paint for the sun into a few groups and lightened them so she had a gradient. Using a very small brush, she began to paint rings around her sun, using light, uneven strokes to show the spreading of the sunlight. Then she used a clean brush to smudge together the circles, trying to make them look like a seamless flow rather than rings. The result: a large sun radiating into a beautifully blue sky behind two dancing Konti.

Now for the water. She remembered how her grandmother had showed her how to add depths to her waves by giving the most detail to the waves up front and shrinking the size of the waves and the amount of detail as they fell back. Simple enough. Kikova mixed together a multitude of shades for this project: some mostly blue, some a pretty shade of green-blue, and some very dark while others were quite light. She used a tiny brush, one that she had used earlier so she had to wash it clean. She needed to do tiny meticulous strokes alternating her paints to give the amount of detail to the water she wanted to give. Laviku had been generous with the sea and there were more colors than she could hope to paint. But she tried. She loved the sea and tried to capture all of its intricacies: every fold of water, every burst of foam, every glittering patch of green and blue. It took the most amount of time but it was worth it. She offered a silent prayer of thanks to Laviku for the sea’s beauty.

The sand was the final aspect that needed to be covered. She mixed a few shades of brown, some more orange than others, and set to work. Using the darkest shade of browns, with her tiniest brush again, Kikova painted a few darkened footsteps in the sand from her grandmother and mother’s dancing. The shoreline right next to the sea was painted the darkest to show that it was wet and its border was not straight but flowing and organic to reflect the movement of the water as it exploded from the waves and on to the shore. Finally she completed the generic part of all her painting and it was time to fill it in with details.

[Kikova]

She selected her ink brush and faintly went over the entire painting doing finite details in ink black to add contours and shape to her painting as well as showing movement. The ink added a hardness to it so she used it mostly on the boarders where a hardness was necessary. After that, Kikova mixed together some brighter colors with white to paint a few soft shells on the shoreline. Kikova was not sure if these shells had actually been there or not, but she had seen similar ones before. They could have been there and that was important.

After hours of work, Kikova had finished. She was exhausted. It had been a long day bent over her easel mixing paints and meticulously selecting brushes but she was exuberant and her face showed that. Kikova had completed her first major work. Kikova was still an amateur painter and it showed it her work of course, but there was nothing she would change about it. Kikova felt that it captured the expressions and feeling of love exactly as she had remembered them and that was what had been important to her.

Kikova pulled out another journal, this one blank and titled in curling letters in Kikova’s own hand: “Kikova’s Catalogue.” It had been her mother;s suggestion to catalogue all of her works if she was serious about becoming a painter. So she sketched a quick sketch of the painting and wrote a short essay describing what she had painted. She was careful, even though she was tired, to make note of all the details and write down the blemishes. She recorded the dimensions and the colors used. Kikova also made note of the date as well as who she had painted. Kikova titled the painting Laviku’s Daughters. She smiled at the thought.

Suddenly, an image flashed before Kikova’s eyes. It was of her own arms, though she could not see her body she knew it was her arms. There was just that feeling. Her perspective was as if she were looking down at her own arms now but she knew it could not be possible because cradled gently inside of her arms was a beautiful baby Konti with whispy white hair and softly closed eyes. The image lasted less than a second, like all of Kikova’s premonitions, but was permeated with the feeling of love and family. Without a doubt, Kikova knew she had seen the face of the daughter she would bear one day. She smiled. The sensations of love and family still lingered on her. Kikova could not wait to be a mother.

[Alice]

Kikova Experience: 1 pt Observation, 4 pts Sketching, 5 pts Painting, 1 pt Writing Lores: Applying Canvas On A Frame, Enlarging A Sketch, Utilizing Criticism, Being A Mother In The Future, Family Love Comments Beautiful thread! Everything Kikova did and experienced radiated an atmosphere of serenity and peace. I liked how you pictured the Konti and their art this way. You also got into great detail with the painting which is excellent. If you feel I have missed a lore or you should get more xp, please talk to me!