Concept Art 1: The Butterfly (practice thread)

[Hay'aan Benedict]

Timestamp: Throughout Winter - Due to the nature of the thread.

The idea had come to her on the beach and she had gone back there to draw the original piece of concept art. This she had done and was quite pleased with the outcome.

Whilst drawing that piece she had met a man called Garit and he had helped her considerably. So, sitting down with the piece of art itself, she laid out a piece of blank parchment and sat there for a while.

The Rule of Thirds Garit had taught her and so she took the original piece and lightly drew two lines down it, both vertical and splitting the piece of art into three equal parts.

That done, she considered the result and frowned slightly. There was some discrepancy in what she had done and so she spent half a candlemark making it more even.

The final product looked very similar to the original, but Hay'aan was pleased with the differences. The lines were clearer and more even, the gaps between the lines were more even also, meaning that there was more of an air of symmetry to it. She smiled to herself, pleased with the idea that she had learnt something from the man Garit, and made a mental note to thank him for his time next time that she saw him.

That done, pleased with the results that could be gained from drawing two vertical lines, Hay'aan stepped away from the drawing for a while, as she got herself a drink and waited for the mood to take her once again.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

Three brightenings later, after a long shift at the Fire Isle Jewelry, Hay'aan felt in need of the relaxation that could only come for her with art. So, putting her workspace back out and sitting down with the butterfly concept piece in front of her, Hay'aan looked critically at the piece of art, reviewing it and wondering what it was that could have been done better with the two vertical lines.

With fresh eyes, of course, came fresh ideas and she spent half a candlemark making minute adjustments. This time it was to line width, which was not even on one of the wings. Although she was very aware that this was being very picky to the naked eye, it was important that the basic details were right, so she carefully drew and redrew the piece.

When she was finally happy with the adjustments made from the two vertical lines, Hay'aan re-drew the butterfly. Then, with the piece in front of her without any marks on it, Hay'aan took her pencil and made the two horizontal lines that split the parchment into three equal sections across. She raised an eyebrow when she did this, amazed at how distinctly uneven her apparently even work was. She was now able to spend some time putting these horizontal areas right, and this she did, working carefully to make sure that all the areas were equal and that where the left wing ended, for example, the right wing did the same in the same place, along the same horizontal line.

This was harder than Hay'aan had at first anticipated, and she spent her time feeling frustrated at herself for what she perceived as a lack of talent or care. However, she knew that this was simply her own way of dealing with this level of detail as much as she knew that it was good practice for her jewelcrafting. She wanted more than anything to be as good at this as she could be, so she focused and spent her time on the two horizontal lines, carefully, oh so carefully, making everything equally spaced and the lines of the same width.

When she had finished she sat back, rubbing her hand on the back of her neck and she sighed, looking at it. It was better, she could see that, there was no doubting it in fact, and for that she was pleased. The difference that it had made might not be much at all to the casual observer, but Hay'aan was pleased with what she had learnt.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

It was not until a full cycle afterwards that Hay'aan was able to once again focus on her art work. It seemed strange to be planning a piece of jewelry that she was not capable of making, but she knew that it was the right thing to do. So she opened up the parchment which she had carefully scrolled closed and she looked at it critically.

First things first, she knew, and so she reviewed her work with the two horizontal lines. There were minor adjustments to the line width, but they were far less than the adjustments that she'd had to make to the vertical line changes and so she was quite pleased. Now that she had done that, Hay'aan knew that it was time.

Time to put in both sets of lines and look at where they met. Where the crosses of their meetings were, there should be "things". These were the focal points, Hay'aan knew and she needed to put the butterfly to rights.

So, carefully and slowly, she drew all four lines on the parchment and looked to see where the butterfly was. It wasn't bad and she was pleased that she'd spent her time looking at first the vertical and then the horizontal, as this had meant that she had less work to do here, but now she needed to ensure that the crosses on the drawing were where the corners of the butterfly wings were, for example.

So, taking her charcoal and pencil, Hay'aan took a clean piece of parchment and drew in the four lines. When that was done, she copied the butterfly, but this time matching up the corners of the wings, for example, with the areas where the top horizontal line crossed the two vertical ones. The body of the butterfly went into the exact middle, and she was able to measure the space between the top of the butterfly body and the top horizontal line. When this was done, she could then make sure that the space was the same between the bottom of the butterfly body and the bottom horizontal line.

All in all, when she looked at it some candlemarks later, Hay'aan came to the conclusion that this was a good brightenings work. She was pleased with what she had done and she put it away carefully, confident that she would look at it again and make some changes before the next step.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

Another busy cycle later, Hay'aan was once more in front of the piece of art. It was better, much better than it had been. It was more balanced, more correct in its lines and content. She was, she considered, much happier with it than she had bee that night on the beach where she had met Garit.

So, first things first, she looked at the piece with the four lines on it and made the minor adjustments to it. That was a relatively quick thing and she looked at it with pleasure.

And so, all that remained was to take it to the next stage. To draw the next step in the piece of concept art that she was using to plan her Master Item on. In her people, this was the piece which told that one was no longer an apprentice and was able to be a professional. In the eyes of her people, that was, not the eyes of anyone else. And this was planned from day one.

So, she sat and drew, taking the next stage. And when she finished, she had another piece, another drawing that was the next stage of the concept art for her final piece.

It was not exactly right yet, not by a long shot, but it was getting there. She was getting happier with it, that was certin. She had the beginnings of an idea in her mind as to how the final piece would work, but the journey was what was important. She had to get it all just so in order to be able to put herself into the piece that would finally be created.

And in her minds eye, Hay'aan could see it. It just wasn't something that she could create yet. But the journey was what it was all about, and for that she was more than grateful, she saw it as an almost spiritual experience. After all, Kaimelea was the planetar of dreams, and she saw her imagination as being the place where her conscious mind and her dreams met.

Secrets :

[Hay'aan Benedict]

A few brightenings later, Hay'aan once more set out her work and looked at it critically. Phase 2 of her master piece was ready. It was something that she would use and look at for many era's still to come and it needed to be perfect.

This was the second stage, and she knew that there would be at least four. So, with the piece that she had drawn last time in front of her, she got to work, making things more even, using the rule of thirds and ensuring that the work in front of her was even and symmetrical. It was important to her that she get every stage right and so she once again drew the lines and looked at the work


The work looked to Hay'aan to be something that needed the rule of thirds applied to it as she looked at it critically. She frowned and considered that the thing to do was to look at it one section at a time and to consider the best way to do it.

She frowned and looked at the piece and then sighed. It wasn't meant to be perfect, she knew that, but it was getting close to the time when it was as good as she could currently make it. She was hitting a plateau, in her skill, and she needed some training or some other kind of help in order to get better. The work was ALMOST there, but she couldn't put her finger on what was wrong with it. She frowned and stood, rubbing the back of her neck and looking down at the piece of artwork critically.

She needed some help, she knew that, and so she decided to get herself off to the University and to make sure that she was enrolled on the Art class come the next brightening.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

But the art class notwithstanding, she needed to make sure that she was fully cogniscent of what was wrong with this piece.

So, she focused on the top left section of the butterfly and looked at it in detail. First, she took it and drew it bigger than it had been, and tried to ensure that it was exactly the same. She looked at where she was with the wings there, and made some minor adjustments to it. In order to understand the whole, she considered, maybe she needed to understand the whole piece, but a piece at a time. It might seem like a strange thing, but it was likely to be something worth trying and it would improve her attention to detail if nothing else.

She wanted it to look sharper than it did, to be a better, clearer picture and so the first thing that she did was to draw the piece that she had in sharper relief. She sharpened her pencil carefully and then drew around it, making sure that she put the top corner of the butterfly in sharp relief.

That would help her, she decided, once she had done the same with the centre piece, which would be something that she did another brightening. Carefully considering her width of brush stroke and the idea of balance, she continued to draw and wondered if the finished corner would be any help to the final piece. It did not matter to Hay'aan, it was all practice and as such there was nothing to do except draw and learn from the drawing.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

She had decided not to undertake the art class just yet, thinking that maybe the thing to do would be to get this piece completely to the point that she was happy with it before she went on to something else. This went against Hay'aan's nature, in truth, since she was more inclined to try and learn everything all at once, but with age had come a better focus for the young gypsy girl and she hoped that this was a sign of growing maturity.

She rather doubted it, in all honesty, as she found her mind wandering and instead of focusing on the butterfly, Hay'aan found herself focusing on the masquerade ball and her meeting there with Klue. The wine had flowed freely, but there was something about that young man that... well, quite honestly it fascinated her. He was so much more intense and deep than he seemed to be, and yet he wasn't at the same time. She liked that dichotomy in him and she had enjoyed her darkening with him immensely. As she reminisced about their time together in the Thane's residence, Hay'aan sketched, with what could only be described as a dreamy look on her face. Had she known that look was there, she would have been quite quite horrified.

But it was rather ironic, then, that she looked down at the parchment and saw what was, undoubtedly, her best piece of work so far. She would have liked to say that it was not Klue, that she had not been daydreaming about him, but that would have been a lie and the young human tried never to lie to herself. It was a piece of art better than anything that she had ever done before, and it had been done whilst her mind wandered.

Hay'aan looked down at the piece of work and considered that there was a lesson to be learnt from that. She scrapped the very-logical-but-rather-souless piece which represented the corner of the butterfly and decided that the way of her people was the best way. She had drawn this from her heart, not her head, and so it should be with everything that she did. It might be different in the confines of the classroom, but here, in this world of possibilities where there was nothing stopping her from creating a masterpiece except her own limitations, she decided then and there that she was going to do it her way.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

And so, the next brightening (only a cylce left now before she went on the submersible with Klue, she thought to herself with a grin) she sat down once again and looked at a blank piece of parchment.

The Rule of Thirds worked well, she had no doubt, but she needed to make this more freeform, more from her heart, for this was what she was planning for the piece that she made which marked her transition. It was hard to explain to anyone, but this would be the piece which would mark her shift from child to woman.

So, she considered what it was that she saw when she saw a butterfly, wondered what it was that she understood by it. She remembered a day in her childhood, a brightening of laughter and singing and dancing, as so many of them were. There had been work and toil, of course, but that was a pleasure, too, a gift. Rather than complain of the aching in yours arms, her mother used to say, give thanks for the arms to ache. She smiled as she thought of her mother and then got on with working.

A butterfly, to her, was more.. jagged than the first and second one that she had drawn. Beautiful in a more natural, less symmetrical way and she tried to capture that in this drawing. She focused more on the bottom of the wings, rather than the top of them, hoping to get more emphasis this way.

When she finished, she looked at it critically. It wasn't perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was better than the cold dissection of the other one. There was something to be said for black on white, she thought and looked at it with a smile. It was a job for another brightening, perhaps, to look at the sketch she had just done and to experiment with some colours.

In truth, Hay'aan considered, her life seemed to be her experimenting with colour at the moment - in a variety of different ways and in a range of aspects of her life, she was exprimenting with colour.

And that, she thought, as she reached for the paints that she used very rarely, but which were there, was no bad thing. She put the paints to one side and just went over the sketch one more time, making sure that the edges were sharp and that the dark of the pencil was dark enough that the paint would show in contrast.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

Putting colour into the piece was the next thing, and Hay'aan moved on to that with pleasure. Putting colour into a piece of art could change it completely, and Hay'aan wasn't sure whether it was what she wanted to do with this one, really. But still, it was something that she would only find out when she tried it, so she set to work with her pastels.

The important thing to remember, she kept telling herself, was that Nature did not create straight lines. She knew this to be true, but it was still difficult not simply "filling in" the butterfly. It was something that she was going to have to practice. She had something of a tendency to "colour-in" and that was what children did.

However, no matter what, she considered, it was true that Nature was full of colour, and texture and beauty, and if she could capture just a small part of it, then she'd manage to achieve more than she had ever thought possible. She could create a drawing, a piece of art, that she might be able to turn into The Piece where she reached maturity in her craft.

All of this was about that, to Hay'aan. It was because of her desire, her drive to learn ever more, to learn more and more and more, and whilst gaining in breadth of knowledge to also go deeply into her chosen sphere, that of jewel crafting, that she was able to be so focused. In a few short brightenings she would be going down into the depths of the oceans with Klue ~ she wondered at the sights that she would see there and she rather suspected that they would fill her with enough raw material for her to work at her art skill for many cycles to come.

But spring would soon be here and she wanted to have something that she could be pleased with by the time that it did. Something that would allow her to look at the drawing and see, in her minds eye, what it was that she had achieved.

She wanted that very much, so the young gypsy worked dilligently and looked, finally, critically at the end result.

[Hay'aan Benedict]

The piece was done, and the colours were clearly there on it. Hay'aan looked at it critically and then sighed slightly. This wasn't the correct medium, she considered and she pulled out her watercolors and the vial of water with them.

Sticking her tongue out as she worked, yet unaware of the habit of so doing, Hay'aan reached regularly to pin her hair back behind her ear and she worked. She painted and painted and she learned a lot about the use of water on the paper before the paint itself - doing that gave the sort of texture that she wanted, the movement away from the formal and restricted kind of work that she had been doing.

So, swirling the water gently and adding the paint a small piece at a time, Hay'aan painted a butterfly. This time she decided simply to pain what her minds' eye saw, what it was that appeared in her imagination when she said the word butterfly.

What she came up with wasn't bad and Hay'aan looked at it with pleasure. It seemed that the watercolor may be her best technique, she considered, and so she looked at it and a small smile crossed her lips.

Her brush technique needed work and she needed to make sure that she was using the brush strokes always in the same direction and also that they were more even with regard to pressure, but all in all, she decided, it was time.

She was ready to go to a class at the Universitas and maybe, just maybe, take another step towards that Diploma.

She smiled, putting the painting to dry and going to wash up her equipment carefully. She had a spring in her step which meant that she was happy with her brightenings work and she washed her brushes carefully before putting away her art supplies.

[Whisper]

DEMIOS THREAD APPROVAL Fantastic thread! Love the pictures. Content of this thread approved! Don't forget to add this to your CIR! PC Skill XP Hay'aan Benedict Art 1