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[Negative Space part 2] More Sketching

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Not found on any map, Endrykas is a large migrating tent city wherein the horseclans of Cyphrus gather to trade and exchange information. [Lore]

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Starlight, Shine Bright

Postby Taurina on November 4th, 2016, 4:08 am


After dark, 17th of Fall 516
Continuation from this thread


Taurina ran her hands over her mare’s warm coat, smoothing the hair under her palms and fingertips. The paintsplash was still and calm as she chomped away at the grass. Her tail occasionally flicked, there was movement of her ears to show that she was listening, and sometimes she would sigh or huff. The Eth knew she had gotten lucky in finding this horse. Melody was not a strider, there was really nothing special about her. She was not fast like the Drykas horses or smart, she did not bond to people more than any normal horse would. The mare was just overwhelmingly calm and easy to command. Whoever had trained her had done so with thoughts of a beginner one day taking her on which is just what Taurina was and Melody had been just what she needed.

“Hey,” Taurina cooed, wrapping a gentle arm around the mare’s neck and coaxing her head up. The mare rose her head, turning to look at the Eth. There was never any alarm in Melody’s gaze, always peace and a look of contentment. Taurina smiled gently at the horse before offering a handful of grass on an open palm to the mare. Melody had already been eating the grass, but Taurina had no other treats and she had wanted the mare’s attention. Melody brought her nose forward and curiously sniffed at the handful. Her soft lips pressed into Taurina’s palm as she easily picked up and ate the blades of grass.

The Eth smiled and ran a hand down Melody’s neck, under the warmth of the mare’s mane. “Good girl,” she praised, even though all the mare had done was eat the same food she was already pulling from the earth. Taurina made a note to get the mare some better treats. After the travel of the the summer and putting up with Taurina’s clumsy, unknowing riding, having some decent snacks was the least the mare deserved. “Alright, you enjoy yourself,” Taurina told the horse in her calm voice before brushing a kiss over the mare’s cheek.

The Eth moved away from her mare, keeping her in sight but leaving her be. It had been two reigns of Syna since she last practiced and Taurina was anxious to fix or possibly redo that sketch of Leth’s reign over the sky. Last night she had ignored it, busying herself with other tasks meant to keep her out of the way of her journal. Tonight though she had decided that she no longer wanted to ignore the cause of her current frustration. It was time.

The Eth opened her pack and fished out her journal. She did not keep much else in the pack. Just the journal, a couple charcoal sticks, and her comb should she need it. She kept her waterskin along with her dagger on her person almost at all times, though she did not know how to use the dagger really at all. It just seemed safer to have a weapon more easily drawn than her bow and arrows. The idea that having a dagger for protection without knowing how to use it could cause more harm than good never crossed her mind. Most of the time she forgot about it anyway. Which was likely even more unsafe.

Taurina sat down next to her pack, journal in hand. She sat with her legs crossed over one another as she flipped to the page with that poor representation of the stars and the moon. She sighed when she saw it again, finding it even worse looking than before. The Eth set the book on the ground before taking the time to put her waterskin by her pack instead of having it on her and running her fingers through her tangled, wet hair. She had dosed the whole of her head with water earlier in the night, trying to cool off in the still horrendous weather. The relief it was suppose to give worked for a little while. Now though, the wet tangles were just as hot as the air around her and made the problem worse because the hair stuck itself to her skin.

Crimson locks plastered itself against her face, neck, chest and arms. Some strands had become snarled in her golden horns creating a sort of cobweb looking effect. The whole thing was rather frustrating and trying to smooth the hair out of the way only created more of a problem. She had to leave it alone, which was hard for her. To not have control in any one area was hard for her.

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Starlight, Shine Bright

Postby Taurina on November 4th, 2016, 4:10 am


Taurina forced her hands away from her hair, trying to forget about it and just let it dry. Once it dried she could comb it out and it would be fine. She could even put it in one of her sloppy braids to get it out of the way and off her neck. That had worked a couple nights ago in decreasing the wretched effects of the humidity in the air, perhaps it would again. With that thought in her head, Taurina was able to settle her mind and focus more on the goal she wished to accomplish tonight.

The journal was picked up once more and brought into the Eth’s lap. Taurina saw the little speckles of off white meant to be her stars and the horrible darkness she had meant to represent the deep blue of the true sky. The moon was the best looking thing on the page, but the shading had been done too sloppily. In her rush to finish it she had ruined the only good element of the sketch. With a frustrated groan, Taurina decided it would be best to just start over. There would be no salvaging this exact piece of art.

First, it seemed like a good idea to go over what she did not like in this sketch so that she could prevent herself from making the same mistakes in the new piece. The main thing Taurina did not like was the overall darkness of the piece. She had made the background so dark that it overwhelmed everything. To add to that, her stars were not big enough. With all the highlighting and line work she had done with them they had become too small. In reality the stars just looked like a splatter of mistakes. Like someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked it across the page. It just did not look right. The only problem Taurina had with her moon was the crappy shading of the inside of it which likely could be fixed. However, since the rest of the sketch was unredeemable, Taurina was not going to go the route of trying to reshape her moon.

Turning to a new, blank page, Taurina mentally listed what she had to do to be successful. ’Lighten the background, enlarge the stars, shade the moon.’ Should be simple enough instructions to follow. Taurina began, this time drawing in her stars was the very first thing she did.

Jarrora Lilacwind taught Taurina about negative space not many days ago. She had mentioned while doing a piece that the background was just as important as the main object of the piece. That both things could tell different sides of the same story if the artist wanted them too. Taurina had also been told that the negative space in an image could be used to cause the object of the artwork to stand out more. Taurina decided it would be good to bring this idea of negative space into this sketch.

In her first try at this piece, the space had been too dark and her subject had not stood out enough. This time she was going to try and make the two meld together and work as one rather than against each other. The idea was to make the stars bigger and have the edges of them fade into the background like the one side of the moon in the first attempt had instead of having the stars be surrounded by stark, bold lines. So while she used the same technique as before to create her stars, the feather light touch of her charcoal and the indented circles, she made them bigger and planned to fade their edges out into the background when it was created.

Once Taurina was satisfied with the size and shapes of her stars, she moved onto her moon. This time she wanted a full moon. The other moon had worked, but a full moon just seemed more fitting for this project. Taurina lightly pressed her charcoal to the page, creating a dot where she wanted to start. Taurina pulled away and bit the inside of her lip. How to create an almost perfect circle? Brows knit together as the Eth started down at the page. There did not seem to be a good way. If she started drawing the circle it would likely end up more oval or disproportioned. Taurina clicked her tongue in thought. She began to create more dots, branching off the first one she had created. Checking to make sure her line continued to move where she wanted it, the Ethaefal continued with this method.

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Starlight, Shine Bright

Postby Taurina on November 4th, 2016, 4:11 am


Taurina gazed up at Leth, trying to see if her work matched up with the real thing. Leth was not full tonight so imagination had to be used, but it was better than nothing. Taurina found her moon to be unsatisfyingly small which caused her to frown. Sighing, she took charcoal to page once more. The dot work had worked in creating more of a circle shape rather than an oval shape so she decided to continue with that method. Luckily the first attempt had such faint line work that it would be easy to shade over it. Taurina tried not to worry too much as she moved to expand her moon.

The Eth created dots around her first moon shape, this time working hard to keep the whole thing circular and even in shape. By the time she was done the thing was about two inches wide from each side in every direction. Taurina smiled when she noticed that it looked good. She was pleased with her work, now for the rest of it. First, Taurina traced the dots of he bigger circle carefully in order to connect them all. It would not do to have a moon shaped solely by dots. Once this was done, Taurina started in on shading her background. She left a buffer of empty space around each of her stars and around her moon. she wanted to make sure she had plenty of room to properly shade and blend things together.

Everything was lightly colored at this point. She never pressed down very hard for fear of making lines that were too bold and too hard to get rid of. Her background was a light shade of grey, the areas around and within her stars all the color of the page and the area around her moon the same color. The inside of her moon would be the same, however, it had the dots of the first moon attempt creating a circle of grey within it. No problem, it would all get changed later anyway.

Since her moon was the one thing Taurina liked about her first attempt, the Ethaefal decided to start with that this time. She began to shade in the crevices that could easily be seen on the moon from down on Mizahar. Most of it had to come from memory since Leth was not full this night. She made it look so that the moon had darker and lighter spots. She also worked around the edges of the moon, slowly filling in the empty space to make Leth look as he did in the real sky. She wanted him to look as spherical as she could make him. Since she didn’t put guiding lines in in the beginning, this was not easily achieved. It took her some time to figure out how to give her moon a more three dimensional effect. When she was done it was far from perfect, but much better than the original sketch.

Now that her moon looked complete, with the space around it filled in and the lines of her first attempt now well hidden, Taurina moved to her stars. She did not want to do much to them. She just wanted it so that their shapes were the same off white color of the parchment and stood out against the background so that they had a sort of brightness to them. Since real stars were bright bursts of light in an otherwise dark sky, it felt fitting that the stars in the sketch should look the same.

Taurina worked around the outside of her stars, in the buffer area she had created around each of them. With her charcoal tipped to its side, she slowly worked to make each star look as though it was jumping off the page. When she was satisfied she moved to the next one and so on. It did not take her nearly as long to do the stars as it had with the moon. They still looked pretty flat, but they were better than before and they were bigger than before. Not overwhelmingly big, but one could tell what they were. They were stars and not just speckled mistakes.

Once the stars were done there wasn’t much left, just the background. Taurina shaded it in, working between the shading of her stars and moon. Slowly she shaded until the colors all matched. She wanted the background to look very blank and out of the way, letting the objects in the piece shine rather than have the negative space stand out.

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Starlight, Shine Bright

Postby Taurina on November 4th, 2016, 4:12 am


It was not long before Taurina’s sketch was finally finished with moonlight to spare. Taurina smiled down at it, pleased with the outcome and proud of herself. It looked just as she had planned for it to. The background was no longer overwhelming and the stars were big enough that they stood out. The moon was shaded to look like the real thing and the colors all worked together. Pleased and not thinking about the flaws in her work, Taurina laid down upon the grass and let her journal rest open across her stomach.

Taurina’s gaze turned up to the sky and lingered on Leth. She beamed, proud that she had created the closest representation she currently could of the only form of his she remembered. There were only glimpses in her memory of her time in his realm and his true form was lost to her. She wished that someday she would get to be reacquainted with him, maybe she would even recognize him, but that time had not come yet and the wish was one that she questioned. Maybe she would see him again, but maybe not. These things were not up to her, no matter how much she wished for them to be.

The Ethaefal sighed, removing her journal so that she could turn to be on her stomach. Her thoughts of Leth had depressed her. She missed the closeness of his realm and the fellowship felt up there. It was all gone now, lost with the tide that brought her back to Mizahar. She did not understand why she had fallen or what her purpose for being back was. There had to be one, she did believe firmly in that. Everything happened for a reason, even if the reason was just the whim of a god. Nothing just happened to happen.

Taurina took her journal and flipped through its pages. Some work was better than others. It was obvious that she had been getting better. Practice sketches of swirls, circles, and lines covered her first pages. Things become more defined the farther in one got. It was a good thing for the Eth to see where she had started and where she was now. Things were not hopeless, she could grow and that did not just apply to her sketching. Which was good because there was plenty she was bad at.

The page covered in her own Windmarks was soon staring up at her once again. Taurina’s gaze narrowed as she once more looked at the swirls and whorls of her Windmarks. They all moved in the same directions, but there was no true rhyme or reason to them. Taurina stared and stared, wanting to see something more in them. The marks covered most of her back, starting at her lower back and stopping just under her shoulder blades. A long and painful piece it had likely been to get. Even in earthbound form, she did not remember.

Staring at her poor, two dimensional representation was unhelpful. Taurina closed the book with a sigh. As she had told herself a couple nights before, another set of eyes would be needed to properly gaze upon the marks and tell her if there was more to look at or if it was truly just meant to look like the swirls of the wind.

Taurina got up and put her journal back in her pack before picking it and her waterskin up. She then moved back over to Melody. The mare was asleep at this point which made Taurina smile. Despite the fact her owner was up throughout the night and took breaks for rest during the day, the mare was steadfast in her routine. Melody slept soundly through the night, only waking for loud or threatening noises. Sometimes touch would wake her as well, but Taurina did not often risk it. She preferred the mare to have the peace sleep brought her. So after checking that the mare was alright, Taurina headed for her tent not many steps away. She always kept everything close if she could.

Once within her tent, Taurina picked up her brush and comb. The crimson locks of her hair were dry enough and it was time to get it sorted out. No more wet cobweb hair hanging on her horns. There was time before Syna’s reign to get it worked out. Gently, starting at the bottom and working her way towards the top, Taurina worked through her hair. In a way it was more time consuming and frustrating than the sketches. At least she could control the artwork to some degree, her hair on the other hand refused to be tamed. It was an ongoing battle and one she would likely fight in both forms till the end. Whenever that came.

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Taurina
Lost in the Stars
 
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Starlight, Shine Bright

Postby Khida on December 11th, 2016, 5:08 am


Taurina


Skill Points
Cosmetology +1
Horsemanship +1
Planning +1
Sketching +4
  • Cosmetology: comb from bottom up
  • Horse breed: Colorsplash
  • Horse breed: Cyphrus Strider
  • Horsemanship: offering treats for attention
  • Melody: a creature of routine
  • Planning: laying out an agenda
  • Sketching: check your reference often
  • Sketching: a dark background makes light objects 'pop'
  • Sketching: drawing a shape in stages
  • Sketching: the relationship between size and presence


Notes


A solid follow-up to the previous exercise. I liked seeing Taurina look back at how she'd improved with practice. Have to admit, I sympathize with the self-criticism... hopefully she'll grow out of that someday!

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.
Spring threads: 2/5 .. | .. Season Goals .. | .. GradersMaxed skill: Observation.
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