A Commissioning

[Anouk]

86th Summer, 515AV

"I like how you capture light." The young woman said, gesturing with a delicate finger towards one of Anouk's smallest canvases. It displayed a nighttime scene of a street in Zeltiva, and the Konti had painted it earlier in the season.

"Thank you." Anouk replied quietly, dipping her head in thanks. She appreciated such compliments, but had never been skilful in accepting praise. According to her own critical eye, there was always room for her to improve.

She stood in the far corner of the art studio, hands clasped together and held behind her back. Anouk was still unused to having potential clients look at her artwork, and the Konti worried if she had done a good enough job presenting her work. Nabisa, her former professor, had kindly allowed Anouk to use her art studio for storage and as a room to invite clients in to inspect her work. Three canvases lined each wall, while another unfinished artwork piece rested against the easel that Anouk currently stood beside.

With a patient gaze, she watched the dark-haired woman pad around the studio, pausing at each canvas to inspect the finished product. Engage with your clients, Nabisa had advised whilst she had helped Anouk organise her canvases. At the time, the younger of the two Konti's had accepted and thanked her elder for the advice, but now Anouk was kicking herself. What should she say? She did not want to come across as pushy, but she needed to show that she was certainly eager for work.

"Might I ask what it is you'd like painted?" She asked gently, stepping out from the corner and falling in beside the other woman.

"Oh, of course." Natalie Smithen gave the Konti a weak smile and nod before turning her attention back to the canvas she had been looking at, "I'd like a painting of my home. My husband and I are planning to move in the new year, possibly to Nyka. But I've lived in Zeltiva all my life and I'd like to take away a memento of my home with me." Her explanation was concluded with a slight sigh, cementing Anouk's assumption that she did not want to move to Nyka at all.

"How lovely." She replied, not pushing for more details but sharing the woman's regret about leaving home. Mura would always be her home, as far as Anouk was concerned. In fact, she found herself rather wishing she had a portrait of her family home as well.

Natalie sighed again, threw Anouk a tired smile and moved on to the next painting. This piece displayed Priskil's tower; the sole piece of art Anouk had painted that featured a building. For obvious reasons, Natalie lingered over this painting longer than she had any of the others. "Is this one painted with oils?"

"Yes." Anouk nodded before explaining further: "I find oils give a more... sturdy finish to a piece of art, as opposed to watercolours. For this piece, I thought oils would be more suitable to fully capture the straight lines and... solidness of a building." She allowed a small smile to flitter across her lips. "But of course, you could choose which type of paints you'd like me to use, should you have a preference."

"I think I like watercolour. It creates... a softer effect, and I think memories are always better softer than the reality."

The two women shared a brief smile before Natalie extended a hand towards the Konti. "I like your work Anouk, and I'd love it if you would agree to paint this piece for me."

Returning the handshake, Anouk smiled and nodded. "Thank you for this offer, Natalie."

And with that, Anouk's portfolio expanded.

[Anouk]

The Next Day

Natalie Smithen's home was a typical two-storey townhouse. There were at least a dozen clones on the same road, and Anouk ahd to admit she was a little disappointed by the lacklustre appearance of the building. She had expected grandeur, something that was quite obviously worth remembering, even for her as an artist. But instead she saw a building with a bright red door: the only notable gesture about it.

"Isn't it sweet?" Natalie said, bringing Anouk the glass of water she had earlier requested, "I grew up here, had all my children here." She gave a long, wavering sigh. "I had wished they would grow up here, like I did. But, plans change." The shrug she gave was full of regret, though the false smile on her expression tried to hide it.

Standing next to the other woman, Anouk instantly felt guilty. The house might not be visually striking, but it clearly meant a great deal to her latest client. She looked to the house again, trying to see it through the eyes of the woman who was clearly in love with it. She supposed the red brickwork was rather pleasant, and the little window boxes quaint enough, though the flowers had gone over now and were starting to curl into a brown pulp. "It is lovely," She murmured, stroking the canvas with her piece of charcoal to add the finishing touches to her sketch. "But I'm sure your new home will be as well."

Natalie smiled again, but her eyes looked wet and reddening. "Thank you, Anouk. Do let me know if you want anything else. I better return inside to make sure the children are alright."

Anouk watched her leave, head down. After sipping at her water, she lent close to her canvas, aquamarine eyes drinking in every minute detail. Had she missed out anything? No: she thought not. She had sketched the detail of the, the slates that formed the slanted roof, the curved door handle and even the crooked footstep that led up to the front door. With a hesitant nod, Anouk decided to move on to the next step of this job: the painting.

She would start with the brickwork of the house, give it an all over paint before filling in each individual brick to properly recreate it's appearance. Choosing a paintbrush of medium thickness, Anouk dipped the bristles into water (carefully avoiding her drinking water -- she had made that mistake before), and began mixing the paint. First, she needed make a brown paint: requiring Anouk to mix red with green. And the pretence to this, of course, was to make green. This was simple enough: the Konti mixed blue and yellow. After this, she began to swirl in her newly made green paint with her red, her paintbrush twirling and twisting into the paint to ensure it the green was evenly distributed.

She paused to clean her brush, methodically spinning her paintbrush in the water, wiping it on a piece of rag that hung off one corner of her easel, and washing it into the water again.

Content with the colour and shade she had created, Anouk added a precise three drops of water into her paint, thinning it out until it was liquid-like and almost translucent when brushed onto the canvas.

Next, came the painting. She swept the brown paint over her sketched guidelines, filling the area with the red-brown she had just created. Due to the thinness of the paint, she could still see the guidelines underneath, meaning that when she came to add more details at a later stage, she would not be without the sketched outlines.

[Anouk]

After covering the brick face of the house in brown, Anouk began to add more detail. She mixed more green paint into her brown, as well as a smudge of black to darken the shade. Then the Konti selected another paintbrush, far smaller than the one she had just used.

Finally, she began to carefully fill in a select number of rectangles to form a pattern of brickwork across the front of the house.

She repeated this process several times, varying the shade and tone every few bricks. Soon, Anouk had recreated the face of the home impressively well; but more details would need to be added later on to truly capture a realistic portrait of the property. Whilst she waited for the paint to dry - which, thanks to the thinness of the mixture, would not take long - Anouk stared up to the front of the house, taking in each patch of mold, each cracked brick. The glass in the top left quarter of the bottom left window featured a minute hole.

The Konti would need to check with Natalie whether these detailed should be included in the painting. Some people liked to capture the reality of life, whilst others preferred a piece of art to reflect the ideal rather than the real. Her previous client, Majorie Denoux had requested that Anouk not paint her grey hairs of wrinkles, for example. Not an easy task when painting an eighty-year old woman, but thankfully she had been pleased with the finished product.

With a sigh, Anouk stepped away from her canvas and stretched out her arms. Painting was her passion, was it sure did test one's muscular posture! After cricking her neck and stretching her back, she stepped back up to the easel.

The windowpanes were white for which Anouk was grateful, as she would not need to mix paint for this part. After cleaning her paintbrush, she dipped the bristled into the white paint and slowly dragged them along her sketched guidelines, first painting a square before dividing it into four parts of equal size. She repeated this three more times, creating the four windows of the house as well as the door frames.

[Anouk]

The roof of the house was slate grey, and after Anouk had mixed black with white, and added a dot more of black, she had mixed a colour close enough to match.

She took less care with the roof, hoping that the contrast of detail would pull one's eye towards the face of the home rather than the roof itself. So Anouk swept her paintbrush left and right, covering the blank area in grey to suddenly create a rooftop for her painted home.

The Konti stepped away again, cracking her knuckles and walking a few paces away from her easel. It was always wise to keep one's mind fresh on the task at hand, and sometimes the best way to do that was to take frequent breaks. She was thankful that the weather had held up well, and also that the street was not so busy that Anouk found herself in the way of a bustling crowd.

Still, it would have been nice to have people to talk to. She looked about herself, closing her eyes to listen in to the conversations she found bubbling past her. The passing voices splashed various colours in her mind, but they dissolved away as quick as they had appeared.

"I like your painting!" An enthusiastic voice called out. Anouk glanced around herself, blinking through the splatters of electric yellow that filled her mind. A young girl stood before her easel, and Anouk rushed over to ensure the child would not accidently (or purposefully) knock the canvas over. "Why are you painting that house though?"

She smiled down at the girl's scrunched up face. "The lady who lives in the house asked me to paint it for her." She said, with the patience of a woman with experience in quizzical children. "She's moving to another city soon and wants to remember her Zeltiva home."

The child considered this for a moment. Then she nodded, as if the idea was indeed an acceptable one. "Can I watch you paint?"

Though far from her preference, Anouk nodded. Several different people had watched her whilst painting several times before now, including her mother and professor Nabisa. She nodded, and the young girl skipped over to her side.

Anouk returned to stand before the easel. Now the largest external feature of the house was done, she could start to pay attention to the vivid red door. She decided to use the pure red paint she already had, instead of mixing any other colour with it. Using her a clean narrow brush, she touched paintbrush to canvas and filled in the narrow rectangular blank space that she previously framed with white paint. When she stepped away after only five chimes, her young audience seemed disappointed.

"Why are you stopping so soon?

"To let the paint dry before I work on the shading for the door. See how there's a square of raised wood in the center of it, for decoration? I'll need to add shadows to the underside of that and light off the top to make it stand out in my painting."

[Anouk]

"Oh. I see." Again the girl shrugged in a casual acceptance of Anouk's word.

With a mild smile, the Konti returned to her piece of art. The paint on the red door was dried now, and with a thin brush, she mixed black and red paint together to create a dark shade. Then she glanced up the sky and back down to the door, ensuring properly that the shadows she would soon be adding would be in the correct position.

She bought her thin paintbrush up to the canvas, adding a straight horizontal line that cut through the center of the door, ending half an inch shy of either edge. After gently dipping the tip of her paintbrush in water, Anouk repeated this action, washing out some of the darker red paint to create the effect that the shadows faded away.

"Why'd you do that?"

She did not answer the girl immediately, but instead the Konti willed herself to maintain concentration until she was finished with the shading.

"To create the illusion that the shadows fade away, instead of being cut off. It's makes it seem more realistic that way."

The pair continued in much of the same way: Anouk painting, adding more and more detail to her creation until the piece was complete, and the unnamed young girl piping up to ask questions every so often. All in all, it took Anouk seven hours to finish the painting, and thankfully her customer seemed more than pleased with the way Anouk had captured her childhood home.