Completed Morbid love

[Penny Noor]

75th of Fall 517AV
Penny’s house
Early afternoon

They had been waiting for Aija to get there the whole afternoon. Truly sometimes one can get from one end of Alvadas to the next in a flash, other times the illusions will take your around in circles even if you life but a stone’s throw away. That’s most likely what they thought happened to Aij.

Emirin who had actually lived on the other end of town had stayed over at Pennye’s that night and Penny herself slept on the floor. And now her back ached and there were rings under her eyes which she was so desperately trying to correct by blacking tea bags onto her eye sockets and letting nature do it’s job.

“I’m running so late on this commission and I don’t even know where to start.” said Emirin, looking quite rough herself. She had most likely stayed up worrying even after the cold, unforgiving floor had managed to lull even Penny herself into a deep slumber, worrying over the job they’ve been entrusted with. “I’m out of ideas.”

“You’re approaching it from the wrong angle.” said Penny with her head tilted back, resting against the mattress of her bed and a sketchbook on her lap.

Even though she could not see what she was drawing from beneath her tea bags, she was doing it stil. Her fingers, gripping the pencil tightly were tracing the elaborate arches and crescents in the paper. A little more pressure and shorter strokes created texture to something that likely wasn’t going to be reminiscent of the shape of anything. A squiffy, deconstructed visage of a cat. But the drawing had a certain dynamic to it that no other method of drawing could accomplish. A freedom of line and a sense of movement that didn’t beat one over the head with a textbook of propriety in anatomical drawings, but instead lingered around the charcoal lines like a ghost. One foot in reality one foot in the places unseen.

“I think we should approach this commission from a narrative perspective. They want beauty, well let's give them beauty but not boring still life and paintings of nude women. Besides, not sure about you but I’m a little bored of constantly looking at nude women and fruit.”

“How many nude women do you look at?” asked Emirin in jest, hopping the answer wouldn’t be something unsavoury she didn’t want to hear. But after almost a season of friendship she had grown accustomed to never really knowing when Penny was concerned.

“As many as you did in life drawing classes back in Zeltiva.” the illustrator laughed clasping closed her sketchbook and tossing it in Emirin’s direction. In turn the sculptress, who was still sipping on her team reached for it and started flicking through the pages.

The little book was so full of drawings, sketches, badly done paintings and ideas that she was surprised the spine had not yet cracked. Perhaps she should get herself one but as a sculptor, her mind worked in a different format. Drawing was the least favourite thing she did and though she wasn’t atrocious at it she often found herself wondering how it was that Penny had developed a more advanced range of techniques than herself and a stylised yet beautiful in some odd way understanding of form. Emirin herself loved photorealism. When she sculpted women no piece was to be out of proportion. When Penny drew she cared little for it and Emi found herself wishing she wasn’t bound by her exclusions too.

She flipped past pages and pages and pages of botanical drawings. A few pages of cats until she flipped to one that caught her eyes. It was just a silhouette of two lovers kissing in the moonlight. The shading was rough as if the artist was in a mighty hurry. There was something about it that appealed to Emirin’s romantic sensibilities however.

“This one” she announced” tossing the book back to Penny.

[Penny Noor]

Lifting the tea bags off her eyes to reveal that they didn’t really help, Penny wiped her face with her sleeve and took the notebook to look a little closer. But she didn’t have to do so for long. With horror, reminiscing that awful night, she dropped that book back onto her lap so that the pages would turn on their own and obscure the hated drawing. “We can’t do that one.”

“Why?” insisted Emirin. “It’s the perfect subject matter. A little tweaking here and there and it would be perfect.”

“I said no Em.”


“What’s gotten into you?”

Penny’s lips opened in readiness to tell her artistic friend everything that proceeded her drawing of that image. How she bore witness to a tragic betrayal and saw the ghost of a dead woman. How she felt the grief of a dead woman. How she lost control of her own limbs as if she was but a marionette in the cruel game of love… she wanted to tell Emirin that the man in the drawing was dead. But at the very last moment she stopped herself. How could she speak of such things?

“Fine.” she found herself saying instead, struggling to find an apt excuse for any of this. Besides she knew that once the sculptress found an idea she loved she wouldn’t stop nagging until she got what she wanted. It was one of those things she both loved and hated about her.

Snatching the book back off her lap and clasping it shut, Penny tossed it into her chest so that it would reveal no more of her secrets. Truthfully she had forgotten entirely that she even had this drawing and all the drawings before that which she could only pray to Ionu in thankfulness that the other had not seen. Otherwise she would have known exactly who the man was and that could not be. Not only he was not dead but to be dishonoured after passing so cruelly? Penny could not play a hand in that even if she bore no sympathies for him other than that of his morbid condition.

[Penny Noor]

It was at that moment that the knock at the door came to decelerate the whole situation and Penny could not have been more glad for it. Jumping up to her feet she skipped over to the door and pulled it open only to find Aija’s beautiful face staring back at her pleasantly. Embracing the woman she hurried her inside where it was now time to plan.

“So me and Penny came up with the perfect idea for the exhibition.” announced Emirin before the redhead managed to even pull off her coat. Her cheeks glowed with excitement.

“Well it was mostly Em.”

“You did the drawings.”

“And you didn’t allow me to pitch any ideas of my own.” Penny rolled her eyes.

“My bad, oh dear Penny please will you grace our presence with some of thy brilliant ideas milady.” replied Emirin in jest, teasingly poking the illustrator’s arm and she sat beside her. “Come on. I asked you for help with this commission because we’re friends but at the end of the day it is me who's sticking my name out there for this exhibition.”

“I know I just don’t think drawing some sappy love nonsense is the way to go.”

“You said yourself. We’ll make a series of works with a narrative. Who doesn’t love a good love story?”

“Me.” Penny insisted, holding onto the last hope of being able to talk Emirin out of this ideas. Out of forcing her to draw the dead man who haunted her nightmares.

“I agree with Emirin.” Aija’s voice suddenly came like the calming southern winds to ease the rage of the storm. “Everyone loves a good love story. I think it’s a wonderful idea, ladies.”

[Penny Noor]

Penny had given up on her squabbling. She was clearly not going to persuade either of her artist friends out of this. No matter how much she wanted to avoid working on this job, how much she wanted to avoid reliving those awful memories she didn’t want that experience to forever hang a shadow over her life. Life was for the living after all and she was in a hurry to move on so much so that she hadn’t paid a second to mourn either Roger nor Olivia. All they were to her was memories she didn’t want. And so it would be most ill advised of her to allow her grief to sour the relationship she had with these two. Whatever would she do without them?

The first step was to plan the series. The women agreed that they wanted a certain softness to the pieces. All of them specialised in something different - for Emirin it was sculpture whilst Penny and Aija drew beautifully. And Ai’s paintings bore a certain fame which would be stupid to disregard. Thus the exhibition would be a merging of disciplines and they focused on the style to give it a visual coherence. ‘Soft romanticism, powdery pastel colours, fluid motion’ were the words Penny noted down on loose sheets of paper in her crow’s feet handwriting.

They talked over each piece in turn and as they talked Penny would draw in visual shorthand what they all imagined. Only small scamps to provide the women a starting point to elaborate upon.

The first was to be a painting. A setting of the scene. A reimagination of the drawing Penny bore deep within her sketchbook like an evil secret but the painting was to make it far more pleasant. They agreed on a square canvas, 8ft by 8ft in diameter. And so Penny drew a quick square and marked on the numbers between arrows. She then divided the square into 9 equal smaller squares by 2 horizontal lines and two verticals. They were the planes of the sketch. The lover’s silhouettes would occupy the junction where the lowest and leftmost line crossed - the focal point. She then drew plant life around them. First a weeping willow that occupied most of the upper right side of the sketch to balance it out. Then hedges and bushes and vine that all would bend towards the lovers at strange angles, still natural but places so that they would lead the eye to the lovers. She drew the suggestion of a gilded fence down by their feet and flowers looking up from inside of it so that the end effect was that of the viewer of the painting would be looking though flowers at the silhouettes in the distance. Eventually just because it fit Penny shaded a path leading towards them at that last object to lead the eyes to the focal point of the painting.

She scribbled adjectives like ‘soft pastel green, and tea cake yellow and peach” with arrows pointing to each object on the drawing. She dipped a brush in some purple ink and mixing it really roughly with black and then watering it down she blocked the silhouette in with a slight lavender hue. She then wrote ‘fades’ in the centre of the painting to signal the colours in the final would be getting lighter as the perceived distance got further.


Finally looking back at the sketch Penny turned a shade paler. It was as if someone took her direct memory and reimagined it in the colours of young ladies dresses… she hated it. The other two however loved the ideas so much they took no notice of the jaded youth.

[Penny Noor]

Next one of Penny’s drawings was something she was planning on doing by herself to add that Penny flare to the exhibition ideas. She drew 3 rectangles a slight distance apart, each of different size and when she was planning her pieces she drew then across all 3 as if they were one. They were very small silhouettes in the distance and each was of a pair entranced in a waltz. On the highest most rectangle she drew them further away and smaller and featureless whilst at the bottom where the pair of silhouettes got closer to the drawing’s viewer there were just hints of fingers and frills around the ladies's dresses and a nose and eyebrow here and there. The scamp was to portray a series of drawing of a waltzing couple only to be completed when all 3 are together but to be sold separately.

It was a portrait of her own cynicism caused by that awful night. No love ever lasts, she thought. No one ever truly ends up together forever. Those in her mind were just fairy tales told to children to protect their frail minds from the cruel truth that when a wife dies, her husband wouldn’t waste a moment before hitching his wagon to another just like Roger had done. The thought angered her.

Below the series of drawings she put down her name in squiggly, uncareful handwriting ‘Penny Noor’.

The next idea the women came up with was for the central piece of the exhibition. The focal point of all this work they would put into it for the days to come. After all it was Emirin who originally was commissioned and therefore it was only befitting that Emirin’s work would take centre stage in it’s most natural, organic state. Penny and Aija were only there to add flavour and mood to the ex Zelitva student.

This thumbnail sketch was the quickest. Penny sketched on the paper before them extremely fast to only give the hint of the finished piece. An outline of a woman’s body, looking down at her lap towards a letter from which flowers would grow and butterflies on her shoulder and in her hair. She positioned the woman on a bench, surrounded by florals and bushes that did not reach higher than her calves, covered by a simple dress. Penny’s hands pressed on the charcoal lightly as she drew.

“Maybe if one of the hand is outstretched, holding a butterfly. But she isn’t looking at it” Said emirin, taking the charcoal from penny’s hands to mark where she thought the hand should be.

Nodding Penny filled in the rest, repositioned it a few times just so that the proportions were more correct. After struggling for a moment she then asked Emirin to sit the way she was trying to draw and looking at all the curves and folds is her friend’s arm she traced them roughly onto the paper. It wasn’t perfect. The proportioning was a little off but it was enough to where she though Emirin would correct it after in her sculpture.

She regrew that same sculpture again from a different angle, this one looking up at thee protagonist so that she could capture a little more facial features. Hollow eyes, straight nose and generic petal lips. The sculpture was suppose to be generically beautiful after all as all romance protagonists are.

There were a few more technical sketches after that. One of skirt folds lined with lace, one of puffy sleeves and one of the positioning of fingers which penny had to redraw a couple times. She still found hands a tricky subject. The drawings of the flowers coming out of the letter, well those she just referenced from her sketchbook.

After that Penny passed the sheet of paper to Aija as they talked over details of the next sketch. Watching the other draw was quite a unique experience to Penny. They had such different styles. Whilst Penny’s was quick and expressive, Aij was light and repetitive and she created thick lines so that the viewers own mind could decide where the line art would lie. Only after finishing the whole thumbnails would she put down more definite lines.

The next drawing was one of atmosphere. A painting purely of an apple orchard that would sit behind the sculpture so that when looking at both of them the viewer was going to be immersed in a whole new world. She blocked down the basic colours. Once again all light and pastel and Penny watched as her hands held the paintbrush.

[Penny Noor]

And so the women continued on for another few hours, thinking up ideas for drawings, paintings and sculptures. They bunned some, thought others perfect but alas they ended up with some finalised sketches and plans of what they were going to do. It was busy work being an artist. But in the end they hoped it would all be worth it.

Word count: 2759

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Penny Noor

Skills

• Cosmetology: 1xp
• Drawing: 2xp
• Socialization: 2xp
• Planning: 2xp
• Organization: 2xp
• Painting: 1xp

Lores

• Cosmetology: correcting eye circles with teabags
• Drawing: texture in line art

Awards & Retribution


Notes
I love seeing threads branch off into something that impacts a character. Moody, reflective and pessimistic Penny is an entirely new creature to the one I threaded with. This was a great read!