#nor brows but we learning ughhhh

[watmalik]

Lucy Happy Birthday. Love, Tim Kojo 🐾

[ladylike-foxes]

For DWC (.... no I just really need Fen): "Finding old photographs you’d forgotten about" - Fen helping Naele! like to cram before a test, or to learn a new art technique or something plzzz

Of course, darling! For you, @tel-abelas-mofo and, as an apology for missing DWC while we are moving, for everyone else in @dadrunkwriting ❤

Nae groaned loudly from where she had been sitting on the newspaper-covered, hardwood floor of my apartment for the past five hours; hunched over a Halla skull still-life, her first grade for Masters Oil Painting. It was very well done, in grayscale, and she had been adding the harsh lighting of its sharply contrasted edges while using photos from her phone for reference. I had been, somewhat absentmindedly, doodling the shadows of her curved spine and scapulae on the on the bottom corner of my paperwork.

“Del'ahn, da'len?”

“Ugh,” She flicked her eyes sharply up over her slumped shoulder, meeting my gaze for just long enough to see as they softened, “I just…don’t think that black and white was what she had in mind. But it’s so much easier to emphasize the texture of the bone and horns—AND less visually boring. Ughhhh, what have I been thinking?! I’m going to get dropped at least a letter-grade for not using color.”“Well, why don’t you just add a glaze when that dries?” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, as she looked up at me again, 

“You have a good grisaille for an underpainting. A thin layer of color on top would be quick and easy, and the right tones would give it a nice tenebrist quality.”

“Tenebrist...?”

A small crease forming between her furrowing brow, I could see her scanning her memory for the word before looking back to me, questioningly. She looked younger when confused, but the yellow lamplight on her face revealed exhaustion around the outer corners of her eyes.I felt a slight twisting in my chest. Before I realized it, I was pulling her backwards, up into my lap; smoothing her hair away from her face to lay kisses from her temple down to the tightly-clenched muscle of her jaw. She made a small, lovely noise of surprise at my affection before turning to blink at me, as though she might have nodded off and this threatened to be a dream. I pretended not to notice, nuzzling my face into her hair to press my nose and lips against her throat, though I too wondered at my own actions.I was not cold to Naele, nor did I (intentionally) withhold affection…but I was not one to make such a show of tenderness, either. Something about her complete immersion in her work—for hours without respite, the weariness of someone much older in her curious, childlike face: it seemed she was having an assuasive effect on me.

“The technique of tenebrism, da'len. The name is derived from the Tevene ‘tenebrae’, meaning ‘darkness’,” Murmur grazing the feverish heat of her skin, the hummingbird flutter of her pulse beating back against against my lips.

“It is the use of light and dark, in extreme contrast,” Her breath hitched and I shifted her in my arms, no space remaining between her back and my chest. “In order to heighten dramatic effect within the composition.”

“Painted so the figure is illuminated by a bright, searching light against a background of intense darkness,” Kisses moving up to the hollow just beneath her ear, pulling a soft, strangled sob from her lungs.

“The three-dimensional form set off by a harsh, but exquisitely controlled,” Brushing my teeth across her raised gooseflesh when I paused, my grin then audible in my whisper before I bit down in punctuation, “Chiaroscuro.”

“Y–you’ll show me,” A quiet gasp, her spine arching for me, “—Hahren?”

She could have me serving her every little whim, just by the way she says that word.

“Mhm,” I was happy to teach her after her previous layer of paint dried.But until then.... I was content to gather up every little sound I could from her lips, tucking them away into my memory to keep.

Oh—And, she did end up receiving an A.