Timestamp: The 75th of Fall, 518 A.V.
Kelski stared at the row of masks, knowing they would not completely finish themselves. She wished they would, since it was hard to do such repetitive work and keep it interesting. The Masks needed to be spruced up, but she was unsure of how she was going to keep them unique, fancy enough to suite the clients, and delivered on time. Kelski knew she could do it, but she wanted to have fun doing so... to put some passion in to the work. And staring at the ugly wooden things, she simply couldn't figure out how to turn something so ugly and clunky into something beautiful without completely altering them via carving or etching.
Maybe it would take both.
The saving grace was that she had an order for a lady’s mask as well. The order had come in along with another wooden half mask that the man had said fit his lady well. Masks were tricky, often ill fitting, so if one didn’t have some sort of idea of the face shape one was fitting a mask too, there was no true way to guarantee a fit. She’d save the ladies mask for later though. She had a few ideas for the row of ugly masks in front of her, including painting, inlaying, overlaying and gilding that would help out a lot. And if each pattern was different, the owners wouldn’t complain too overly much.
Kelski picked up the first mask, moved it to her active workbench, and pulled out her charcoal pencils. She began sketching flames upon it, fully intending to take the full faced ugly thing and create arching lines around the eyes nose and mouth that curved away as if flames were burning from the orifices and licking back along the skull.
Her charcoal flew across the wood, creating the decorative swirls until she was satisfied with the pattern. Then she clamped the mask into her vice, padding it with cloth, and pulled out the woodcarver’s kit she picked up in the market. Taking a chisel and hammer to the flames, Kelski carefully began to carve out the excess material so the flames were sunken into the mask.
She was no expert carver, but what she was doing took little in the way of skill. Remove material, sand, and gild. Then she’d paint the mask a dark black, manufacture and glue class gems along the licks of the flames, and it should be passable for the price the mask owner wished to pay. He couldn’t complain about the real gold gilding either. It would truly be nothing less than spectacular.
Kelski carefully carved, removing material so that the wood was beveled downward and then carefully began to sand the indentions with thick paper that had been glued with sand. It took her bells to get the carving just right, smoothing out the whirls. She fussed and fussed until it was smooth enough to satisfy her because the gilding was unforgiving and would show flaws.