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photosincorporated · 4 years

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Dora Maar Exhibition

Photo analysis (photo of photo and original look provided)

The Years Lie in Wait for You (1935)

Why did you choose this work?

I chose this work because I find the way that Maar chose to place the white spider web on top of the models face to be really interesting. Spiders are usually seen as scary but the models face is so serene. It creates really cool emotional dissonance.

What style(s) or genre(s) describes this photo (portrait, fashion, reportage, advertising, fine art, or...)?

This photo is a portrait mixed with photo overlay. The original photo was only the models face and the spider web and spider were added after.

Identify and describe two composition aspects or photographic attributes (e.g. framing, point of view, shapes, lines, use of light, use of colour or b&w, etc., and also any other techniques used).

The lighting in this photo is really interesting. The main highlight on the models face focuses on her forehead and the top of her eyes. It also lightens down toward the bottom on her hands and the very top on her hair. In contrast this creates strong shadows around the models face and pulls the viewers eye toward the center of the image. It also makes her eyebrows appear darker and leaves the bottom half of her face in shadow which creates a serene but somehow mysterious look. Another really interesting aspect of the lighting in the photo is the fact that the spider and the web are stark white. This means that it is even lighter then the highlights of the original image making the image seem more aged and pointing out the black and white grey shades.

Another composition aspect is the fact that rather than having the models face and the spider in the web perfectly centered they are slightly to the left and up. This is really cool because a lot of the time you see an artist trying for symmetry since as humans we tend to associate symmetry with beauty and find it satisfying. By putting the main focus points slightly off to the side it pulls you toward a different part of the photo and also helps to solidify the somewhat uncomfortable feel of the image.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph.

I feel like these choices strengthen the overall feel and meaning of the photo. The spider being such a good focal point due to its lighter color and the fact that the placement of the focal point within the photo its self both make the viewer somewhat uncomfortable makes sure that the viewer is almost unsettled by the image.

Consider both:

What is the photograph of? (Concrete subject; this is what you see in the image)

The photograph is of a young models face with her hands up to her face in a very delicate nature. Placed over this original image in a stark white is a spider in its web.

What is the photograph about? (abstract subject; this is how you interpret what you see in the image)

I feel like this image is about what is viewed as beautiful and delicate. While it is unsettling in overall feel due to the spider and its proximity to the models face as well as the lighting that has been placed on the models face, I can’t help but think about how the to are similar. They are both so delicate but strong images. The model is very feminine and the way her hands are positioned make her seem even more delicate. However, the lighting shows a sense of mystery and almost strength. Similarly, while the spider can be scary, the web its self can be quite delicate. But, when put in the context of the spider, the web is very strong as it is able to hold up the spider and help the spider to capture food.

Are these different? If so, how?

These two aspects of the photo are different. From an immediate and material point of view both the models face and the spider are very common images. However, when placed together they create a very unique narrative of something seemingly delicate but also powerful.

Untitled (Fashion Photograph) (1935)

Why did you choose this work?

I chose this work because I found the fact that the model’s face is covered to be quite interesting.

What style(s) or genre(s) describes this photo?

This is fashion photography, but, as she normally does, Maar has added a sense of fantasy to the image by keeping the models identity a secret through the use of carefully placed props.

Identify and describe two composition aspects or photographic attributes.

One immediate composition aspect that the viewer is meant to see is the fact that the model doesn’t appear to have a head as it is covered by a large star. Due to the fact that this star seems to reach to either side of the models arm it is clear that, unlike with the spider web, Maar took this photo with the star already in place.

Another interesting composition aspect is the position of the model. The dress she is wearing already creates a long line of light traveling up through the photo. By having the model positioned with her hands reaching above her head it only works to extend this line. It is also accompanied by the tall straight lines of the curtains the model is holding and the narrow cut of the image its self. Due to the strong use of these vertical lines and the already narrow cut of the image it makes the image seem almost longer than it actually is.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph.

I feel they just really work to accentuate the height of the model as well as some of the more intricate details of the dress that might otherwise be overlooked. It also makes it seem as if there could be a lot behind the curtain that cant be seen from this angle which adds a feel of intrigue to the image.

Consider both:

What is the photograph of?

The photograph is of a model standing in front of a partially open curtain in a beautiful gown with hanging stars around her. One of which is covering her head and actually manages to make it seem as if she has no head at all.

What is the photograph about?

The photo is a fashion photograph so it seems like it should be about the model and the amazing dress she is wearing. However, due to the composition of the image it seems to be more about the fact that the model seems to have no head but is still positioned as if she is looking behind the curtain to see something that we can’t view.

Are these different? If so, how?

These are both similar and different. They both have focus on the model and for some aspect of them have the viewer look at her dress and her stance. However when it comes to what the photo is about from a theoretical stand point it starts to separate from what the image is of due to the mysterious nature of the photo.

Untitled (Fashion Photograph) (1935)

Why did you choose this work?

I chose this work due to the fact that the woman in the photo has tattoos which was still seen as more of a taboo or something uncultured at the time, especially for women but Maar specifically decided she wanted the model to have them and went as far as to add them on herself.

What style(s) or genre(s) describes this photo?

This photo is also fashion photography. I think i was drawn to Maar’s fashion photography because she had such an alternative view of how to stage the photos compared to others I have seen.

Identify and describe two composition aspects or photographic attributes.

The way Maar chose to crop this photo makes it so it is clear the model is interacting with someone or something off to the right of the image but we as the viewer can not see them. This leaves the viewer to try and guess at what the model is so interested in based on the minimal context clues they have.

Another composition choice Maar made with this piece is the fact that, while the rest of the photograph is in black and white, the tattoos she drew on are in colour. All be it the colour is light and pastel, it still stands out compared to the rest of the colorless picture. Along this same pattern of thought Maar seems to have decided to further strengthen and accentuate specific aspects of and lines on the model by lining them with black ink. For instance the models hair, eyebrows, and lips all seem to have a black or darker outline that does not seem to have been part of the original photo. By doing this it makes the tattoos seem more natural since they aren’t the only thing on the model that has that level of saturation and darkness. It also ensures that the viewer at least glances at these parts of the model before, most likely, settling on looking at the different tattoo designs.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph.

I feel like Maar’s choices with this photo, specifically the choice to make the model have so many tattoos and have them specifically in colour, shows how Maar liked to push the boundary of what was accepted in the photography and art world at the time. It also reflects something that the general public might be opposed to.

Consider both:

What is the photograph of?

The photograph is of a young woman who has tattoos and short black hair and is interacting with something or someone off to the side of the photograph.

What is the photograph about?

I feel like it is about the models beauty but also about the views of society at the time. For instance, some of Maar’s other fashion photographs feature completely nude models which was very risque for the time period. Likewise, unlike today where they are growing in popularity and more accepted by the general population, tattoos at the time were not something that just anyone would have, By taking a photo of this beautiful young woman, who would have been easily accepted into society, and adding tattoos to her Maar showed how easily something could change from being desired by others to being something of an outcast.

Are these different? If so, how?

I feel like there is a large difference between what the image is of and what it is about, especially from the point of view of someone from today. Today we look at an image of a woman with many tattoos and may think it to be more common place. However, when we look at what the photo is about we as the viewers are made to take a closer look at when the photo was taken and how this relates to the true content of the photo.

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unit7designmethodsgeorgesmith · 5 years

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YCA Asset Creation: Queen Elizabeth Illustration + Cover Design

20.03.19

Today I started working on my illustration of Queen Elizabeth for this project. I wanted to have her on the front cover of a graphic novel that I would be designing. The background would have Big Ben, which you can see in the previous post below.

Rough Linework

So, to start with, I sketched out a rough drawing of the Queen in a drawing program called Clip Studio Paint. Out of Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop and this, I find this to be my favourite program to draw and paint in. For this rough sketch, I used a thin watercolour brush like I usually do. I used various different reference images from Google. I decided to draw her like how she looks most of the time. I think that the hat and the curly hair are kind of her defining parts. The hair was really challenging to get right—I’m not very good at drawing curly hair/hair in general. The hat looks pretty good too I think. I tried to get it to look like her as best I could, as far as this particular style will let me, and I think I kind of pulled it off, but I still need to improve on my faces in general.

Polished Linework

After finishing the rough sketch of the Queen, I thought it time to go over the lines. To do this, I created a new layer, and then lowered the opacity of the sketch layer, so that I could go just make out what I was drawing over. I don’t really like how the lines turned out once I compare it to the original sketch work, because it kind of lost the sketchy and rough charm, but I thought that I could probably make up for that when it comes to painting it. In this screenshot, you can see her outfit now—it is her usual outfit that she appears in public wearing. I went with this one because it was simple, and I would prefer to keep the focus on her face if possible. Overall, I’m not a big fan of how it looks right now, but I’m confident that I can improve this soon.

Colouring

The next thing to do after finishing the linework was to colour in the Queen’s main parts, so I’d decided that I wanted her outfit to be coloured red, since I was adhering to the colour palette of the Union Jack; red, white, and blue (the blue will be the sky, white for clouds). I chose a regular not-too-saturated but not-too- desaturated red shade for her clothing and her hat. For the moment, I want to have the rose thing on her hat red, but maybe it will look good if I am to make it white instead. I chose a middle shade of grey for the hair, because I would need highlights for it as well as, obviously, darker tones. A regular white skin tone and plain white for the eyes and mouth for now. The mouth is white at the moment as I plan to show teeth, but later on I change this.

So, to colour this in, what I do is I create two layers—one where I will colour whatever I want, so the hat and torso for example. And how I colour is I use a pen to draw around the outside using the red, and then I just fill in the rest because it is much more easy and efficient than colouring in the hat, and then doing the outlines. Anyway, after I’ve coloured the parts, I use the second layer above the coloured one, and apply a clipping mask of sorts. This enables me to paint on this layer, only on the colour that I’ve filled in, an extremely useful feature.

Painting Face I

Now it was time to paint the face that I’d coloured in with the skin tone. I added the necessary shades first, like with her face lines, which I’ve exaggerated in her favour, the shade under her nose and shadows being cast by her hair, look to the left and right of her face. Also, you may have noticed that I completely forgot to draw the eyebrows from the second screenshot onward, so i corrected that below. I painted in the inside of the ear using dark shades also. It was fun to paint underneath the head, where a shadow is being cast. The shadow being cast from her hat makes her look almost evil and scheming right now, I think it may be because the eyes aren’t painted yet. There must be a relatively harsh lighting right now with how dark I’ve made the shadows—probably midday sunlight or something. There are all sorts of shades among the shadows, underneath the hat are a mix of greys, oranges and also a bit of red and pink nearer the top, where the colours from the hat bounce off. The shadow below the head has multiple shades too, mainly the same as the shadow from the hat, except from reds. There is a slight pinkish shade on the left side of the of the shade, bouncing off of the clothing, and an orange shade just under the chin.

Painting Face II

Next I decided to work on the face some more to try and finish it. I started with the eyes. The eyes were under the hat’s shade, therefore, I needed to paint them accordingly. This meant that the main white in the eye would be a darker shade; grey. I painted her eyes a greyish blue, like her real eyes, and kept the shading quite minimal. After I finished the iris, I went over the outside using the blur tool to give it a soft look. Then I went back to the brush tool and did one white stroke on each of the eyes, and airbrushed a slight white over the middles of them. I think that it really adds to the painting and makes her eyes look less dead, which is something that often unintentionally happens when I’m drawing eyes. After finishing the eyes up, I moved to the mouth. After a bit of experimenting, I realised that making her grin was a bad idea, mainly because I just couldn’t get it to look right, but also because, once I drew her with her mouth open, presumably in joy, it looked a lot better.

I also tidied up the face shading, using the blend tool to blend parts that looked like they were too harsh and intruding. Next I continued on with the mouth area, and painted her red lips. Right now they don’t look very good, like they’re too thin or something, I fix this somewhat later on. I painted a small white dot on her lips to look like a highlight, which I think really goes far. Finally, I worked on the hair—easily my least favorite part of the illustration. For starters, even the sketches don’t look good to me, so adding depth to the hair via color wasn’t sounding too thrilling. But alas, I continued on, and painted them in a way that is acceptable, not great but I’m okay with it, so I continued with the shade from the hat, and painted a dark shadow coming from one edge of the hat to the other. It kind of dips, down and then up at the edges, which corresponds to how close the hair is to the sides of the hat. There aren’t many different shades among the hair, but I did decide to make it get lighter as it went down, no particular reason really, I just thought it would look nice and kind of a little less boring.

Painting Outfit I

Next I worked on her outfit, which wasn’t too difficult to come up with something I was pleased with. I looked at references of her wearing this kind of stiff outfit when I was sketching, and the reason I call it stiff is because there are minimal wrinkles on the outfit, not really any lines to introduce any shading to, and the lighting that I went with doesn’t really help me there either. Instead I used some of my usual tricks to add some kind of nice depth to something that is really flat otherwise. I painted a gradient from a desaturated purple-ish red from the bottom of the composition, to the red that I started with nearer the top. Although, this isn’t to say there’s no shading whatsoever, there is a nice shadow that continues on from the neck from the one that is being cast by the head. This shadow has a nice variety of shades in it, some greys, some purples and reds, and a slight desaturated orange as a bounce light from the skin tone that is very close by. There’s also some other shading as you can see in the illustration. Also a dark shade where the button is sewn through.

Painting Outfit II

I am nearing the end of the illustration, and next is to do the hat, which I thought would be difficult. Luckily so, I got kind of distracted by my linework—it was really messy still, therefore, I needed to clean it up, which took quite a while to be honest, though I think it was worth it. Essentially, I went over the hat lines with a thicker brush and then erased the thicker parts to correspond with the rest of the lines throughout the drawing. Now, it was a hat, not much I can think to shade really. I did the same gradient trick that I used with the outfit, and then also did a slight darker shade down the right hand side of the hat, to give it a slight beveled effect—make it look as though it was rounding off towards the edges, as a hat would do. I may still work on the hat some more later. I made the strip across the bottom of the hat a darker shade so that it didn’t look too boring. Now, for the white flower thing, I’m not sure what to call it, it was a challenge at first. I started by trying to make each of the points join together at the center where it would be darker, but as that looked terrible to me, I decided on a much more appealing way of painting it. As you can see, it looks quite soft and pastel-themed almost. I used a slightly large brush size to paint these blobs everywhere to create the effect of something that was puffed out. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and I love the colours that I used in it. Again, looking at it now, the hat will probably need some more doing to it, but right now, I was roughly done with the painting.

Finished Queen Elizabeth Illustration with Cover

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man9a · 7 years

Photo

So because I have no life and because I offered to help an anon, I’m making this manga colouring tutorial.

Now first off I’d like to apologise because I personally suck at explaining things. I really do and I’m sorry if this confuses you.

I used Photoshop CS6 (its pretty easy to get it off the internet and I can’t remember where I got mine google is your best friend. But you can see if this masterlist by itsphotoshop still has working links) But, I’m sure other versions of photoshop like CS5 and CC can do this as well.

If this actually helped you please give it a little, like/reblog!

Now on with the tutorial!

Ok so I’m going to use a mangacap from bungou stray dogs and I’m gonna be colouring something I coloured before (here), my depressed home boy Atsushi

(scan courtesy dazaiscans)

When you open it in photoshop please ensure that your image mode is RGB and not Index (this is common with scans from mangastream). To change it go to Image>Mode>RGB

Crop out the area you’re gonna colour. And resize to desired size (I chose 540px) because I wanted to upload it to tumblr)

Now we’re gonna clean it. I have no idea how other people clean theirs, this is just how I do it.

First double click on your background layer and click ok on the box that comes up so it will not be locked.

Now click channels

And then click the dotted circle at the bottom. After, click delete on your keyboard.

The image will show up something click this:

Now go to Layer(on the topbar)>New Fill Layer>Solid Colour and you set the colour to pure white). Move that layer below your mangacap.

Now it’ll look like that. Then I merged those layers together.

Because I don’t want the background with the bus andbench and the panel above Atsushi, I’m going to create a new blank layer (so if I make any mistakes I can fix it), take the polygon lasso tool

(if you dont see it right click on the area where you see the normal lasso tool/magnetic lasso tool and then click polygon lasso tool)

and then I select the areas around Atsushi.

Then on the new layer I created, I use the paint bucket tool and fill in the selected area with the colour i wanted which is white.

now it looks like that.

Then on a new layer, I take a black solid brush and I change the size to something small (like around 2-3px) and I just fill in the black areas which look at little weird. For example, I thought Atsushi’s pupils looked a little weird so I filled them in.

So now it’s time to colour. Now go google a random animecap/coloured pic (preferably official art) of your character. Then open it in photoshop.

I used this pic so yeah.

Now using the colour picker tool, pick their skin colour. Ok now go back to your mangacap, create a new layer, and select all the areas where your character’s skin is with the polygon lasso tool.

Then use a solid brush (basically one of the first default brushes from photoshop you see here), adjust the size to suit, then colour in with the characters skin colour. Set the layer to multiply.

Now, create a new layer and clip it to the layer you coloured their skin on. (clip a layer by right clicking on the layer and click clip layer and the layer will clip onto the layer below it). Set the layer to multiply

Then you select the areas where you see a shadow on the character’s skin.

If there is none, what you can do is google some lighting references and choose shadows on faces that are at a similar angles as your character (does that make sense??). Or you can just not put it in.

Now using the same colour you used to colour the skin. Colour the selected areas.

If you decide that other areas need a deeper shadow, you can create another layer, set it to multiply, clip it to the layer below, select the areas you want to be darker and just fill in the selection. I did this for the frown lines on Atsushi’s face.

Now because Atsushi looks as if hes about to cry, using a pink colour (like the one below),

I make a new layer, set it to multiply I clip it to the skin layer and using a soft brush I brush over under his eyes and a horizontally across his nose.

Now to get some soft shadows (?) around his face and like the areas of skin below his hair, using the same pinky colour, and a huge soft brush (i used 288px) brush the area around his face but not directly near like this:

(the gif is shitty and rushed im sorry)

Using a soft brush eraser you can just fix it up from the inside of his face. I’m sorry if that sentence made no sense.

Now on a new layer (set to multiply), using the same colour I used for the soft shading, I select the area where inside his mouth is supposed to be and using a hard brush I fill that in. And then you know the drill, I create a layer, clip it to the layer before, set it to multiply and just put in where I think the shadow would be.

And then going in with a soft brush on another clipped layer and just put in some soft shadows around.

Now I’m going into his eyes. Now I do practically the same thing I do for his skin here: I pick the colour of the eye from the art with the colour picker tool, make a new layer, set it to multiply, colour it in.

Now it, really depends on how I feel to do the shadow on the eye.

Sometimes I do something like this where I shade the top half of the eye, like in the image above.

Or I simply outline the eye and the edges alone are made darker. Like this:

In this case I chose to go with the latter because I felt like it.

NOW. Normally eyes have that ‘shine’ to them right. I normally don’t do the eye like this, I just put a normal circle kinda by the pupil like this or follow whatever highlight the mangaka drew like this:

But since I thought Atsushi’s eyes looked bland like this, I highlighted it more. Now this is optional, I thought it looked better this way because following the highlight it originally had was bland for me so I did it. You by no means have to do it, it just depends on your preference.

So on a new layer, on the eye I selected a kind of a crescent shaped like so:

Up close and personal with my depressed son. Then using the colour white, I colour it in with a hard brush.

So now at the bottom of the last panel on the right, you’d see a button that says “fx,”

Click that and click outerglow. And a tiny window will show up. Now choose a colour a little lighter that your eye but make sure its around the same tone(?) (a warm colour or a cool colour; red under tones, blue undertones, etc.). In my case I chose a pinky colour.

As you can see I set the blend mode to screen now this part is a must, but the opacity and the spread and size are all up to you, again its all based on your preference.

Now your eye will look something like this:

Now just duplicate that layer and move it to the next eye and rotate it by clicking ‘ctrl+T’ if necessary

now boom you got your eye. I put it in a group so it’ll be a little organised.

Now onto his hair oh the pain.

Now you know what to do, make a new layer, set it to multiply, pick the hair colour off your reference image, select the areas with the hair (this includes eyebrows and lashes if they’re there), colour it in.

I hid the layer where I put the redness of his eye and only realised just now so I unhid the layer sorry.

Now Atsushi’s hair on his head has a lot of layers (?) so I had to select the areas where I saw the shadows going (?) (I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense). If your character has shadows in their hair to go along with by all means follow it but in my case his hair sort of didn’t.

So as you can see, I selected the areas where I deemed fit to have harsh shadows, I really did not put much but you can tell I did something. It all depends on where you want to put it though, I’m no expert in shadow theory so I probably suck at it but eh.

Now if you notice there’s kind of a shadow over his hair and it’s cast over his face to. So I just followed what I saw, and on a new clipped layer I selected the area and using the same colour I used for his hair and just did a shadow for that area like so:

Now normally I put soft shadows and you can see I used a pinky shade for that when I did the skin and his mouth, but since the colour didn’t look like it had any pink undertones (did I say that right), It kind of looked weird with a pink shading. So for the soft shading I used a greyish colour:

and I just did the normal thing where I brushed around the hair with a soft brush.

NOW this part I’m about to do is completely not necessary, I barely do it but I did it in this colouring so yeah.

Using the texture above, I clip it to the hair, set it to screen, change the opacity to 50% and the fill to 28%.

Its bare noticeable but it gave his hair a slight purplish look so I liked it.

Now this part is something I barely do as well but I did it here so I’ll show you how.

Using this texture, I set it the opacity to 22%. I then select where I want the line of the highlight to be (you know how anime characters especially have this line of shine across their hair). Like this:

And then add that to a layer mask by clicking the button next to the “fx,” button. (I did it before I’m sorry I didn’t take a screenshot before I added the layer mask I’m really sorry).

Then you set the layer to soft light and boom.

You have a highlight looking thing.

Now for the shirt I basically did what I did for the skin, hair and other areas: make a new layer, set it to multiply, pick the hair colour off your reference image, select the areas needed, colour it in.

Now advice, I don’t know if you want to do it or not but, I personally think that if your character has a white shirt do not leave it pure white. Colour it with an off white colour like a light grey. Like this:

It makes it easier for me at least to put in the shadows and stuff as you have a layer to clip it to and its easier to just use the same colour and click multiply.

Then again this all depends on your preference.

For the soft shadows I used the same colour I used for his hair soft shadow.

As you can see, he has a tie and suspenders which are both black.

Now again advice and it’s my opinion I am by no means an expert but I think one should never use a pure black colour to colour it in unless it’s what you’re stylistically going for it. I’ve seen a lot of artists on tumblr say this and they use a somewhat dark blush-ish grey colour and I 100% agree with it.

However again, everyone has their own preferences.

Now the colour I typically use for black areas leans more to the gray side rather than the blue.

Now again what I’m about to do is not what I normally do but I did it in this colouring so I will show you but it is not necessary you do it.

Using the same texture I used for his hair, I clip it to the various black pieces of clothing he has, moving it around until I think it looks nice and changed the opacity as I saw fit. I did not change the blending mode from normal to soft light but you can if you want to.

To do each part individually, Using a layer mask and a pure black soft brush, I removed the parts affecting the other parts. And I unlinked the layer mask to the original layer (double click the chain link that’s between in the layer and the layer mask) so I can move it if I wanted to without moving the layer mask.

For example his suspender which appears to be at your left, I place the texture over that, moved it around, changed the opacity as I saw fit, removed the parts affecting his tie and other suspender. And was left with this:

Now just do that for the other parts.

Now I forgot to colour his teeth and white of his eye and only realised now so I just used the off white colour and coloured it in real quick (I put in the harsh shadows as well)

Now by all means you can leave it like this but I like to put in highlights to the skin but you can leave it like this. I have not put highlights to the skin before in some of my other colourings like this one of haiba alisa from haikyuu.

Now what you’re gonna do on a new layer set to normal is select a fine line around areas like, the perimeter of the lower half of the face, frown lines (if you want), the outer perimeter of the ear, the bridge of the nose, a little circle by the lip (if you want) and if the character has sweat or water on their face, select the outline.

It’ll be something like this. Now with a hard white brush fill in selected area.

BOOM NOW YOUR PRACTICALLY FINISHED CLAP THE STRUGGLE IS OVER.

Now you don’t have to do this part it’s your personal preference. I have a photoshop plugin Topaz Clean 3 which is really easy to get off google so if you want you can go get it. Now I copy every layer and merge it. Now using Topaz clean with these settings:

I apply it to the layer and set the layer to 50% opacity (i literally wrote 50% free the 1st time im trash)

Now to add a little more oomph to my colouring because I can.

I used the same texture I used on his hair, set it to screen, I added a layer mask and erased the areas it affected besides the text so they text looked coloured.

Then you apply your psd. Now the psd I’m using is psd 01 from this psd pack but its really heavily modified and I removed a lot of the layers. Then I used 2 textures

with blending mode soft light and opacity 37%

and

with blending mode screen, opacity 51% and a black and white gradient layer clipped to it.

and boom you’re done!

And that is the end result! I hope you enjoyed and that it wasn’t too confusing!

#itsphotoshop #yeahps #tutorial #photoshop tutorial #*mine:tutorial #*mine #photoshop #manga colouring #manga coloring

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middlecountries · 7 years

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By Any Means Necessary

My problem with sex started with the fact that I was shy. I was always nervous approaching women and yet always lusting after them. The lust was an aching feeling that started in my groin, crawled up my abdomen and nestled deep in my skull. I fantasized constantly about sleeping with women I met or merely saw. The fantasies grew deeper if I’d gotten to know the women in them. Depending on the personality or specifics of the woman in question, I’d picture us driving along the French Riviera or curled up in a cabin in the woods. There was always of some form of skyrocketing career success to these scenarios too – my career success, of course.

The second part of the problem was more practical. I hadn’t sold a single painting from my last series and they’d been up for months at one of the hottest galleries in the city. I drew a salary from teaching Introduction to Abstract Art at York, but it barely covered my food and rent. Most of my friends and family were married with children and had well-paying jobs. If they weren’t married, at least they ate at upscale restaurants and took overseas vacations. I couldn’t compete with those things. The best I could offer someone was the occasional dinner out at a neighbourhood restaurant and maybe a movie afterwards.

I thought of a way to resolve my lust-poverty conflict but hesitated to act on it. Hiring a hooker went against my natural timidity, not to mention most standards of moral behaviour including the law’s. At the same time, I felt really handcuffed. I couldn’t work in my state of sexual frustration and I couldn’t date in my financial disrepair. Besides, what was so wrong with seeing a prostitute? In some ways wasn’t straight forwardly paying someone to sleep with you better than misleading them into thinking you were something you weren’t?

One problem with the solution was that I had no idea where to start looking for a hooker. I thought about going to Shuter and Sherbourne and picking up a streetwalker but I didn’t have a car. I could call one of the ads in the street newspaper, the ones with over-saturated pictures of women posing in lingerie, but which one? There were hundreds of them and who knew who would show up at my door. At least with a streetwalker you knew upfront who you’d be getting.

I thought the best option was to go to a strip club and see where that led me. There was bound to be a ton of desperate guys there and that would surely attract the sex trade’s attention. That’s the best means to undertake this unscrupulous affair, I decided. Go to a strip club.

I went to Jilly’s for the first time one night in mid-March. Its biggest selling point was that it was only a ten-minute streetcar ride or twenty-minute walk from my house. It occupied the main floor of the old five-storey brick building at Queen and Broadview. When I arrived I noticed that all the first and second floor windows were covered with grey-painted plywood and the rest of the building looked like a rooming house or derelict apartments. The entrance to Jilly’s was in a discreet alcove on Broadview.

I walked through the doors and as soon as I did my eyes shot straight to the stage. The room was darkly lit but clearly and unmistakably, there was a woman dancing less than twenty feet away wearing nothing but platform shoes. It had been so long since I’d seen a woman naked that I got a hard-on instantly. Her breasts were small but visible and her hips shot out from her waist at that angle so alien to the male body. The sight of her hips reminded me of the arc that the top of the sun makes as it sets on a clear day. I tried not to stare as I found a seat at a table ten or twelve feet from the stage.

A waitress in a short black skirt came and took my drink order then came back a minute later with my drink. “Eight bucks,” she said as she set the vodka-soda down in front of me.

Eight bucks? It was a lot for a drink but not for the sight of those beautiful hips swaying in front of me.

I gave the waitress a ten and told her to keep the change. She tightened her cheek muscles and walked away briskly.

As soon the waitress left I resumed ogling the girl on stage. I let my eyes travel up and down her body several times. At closer inspection she wasn’t as attractive as I’d thought. Her legs were bruised and she had blemishes and stretch marks on her ass. But worse than either of those things was the expression on her face. The corners of her mouth sagged sullenly and her brow was wrinkled above her sharply raised eyebrows. She looked as if she was trying as hard as she could to imagine herself any place else.

The blood continued to flow below my belt all-the-same. At first I’d enjoyed the sensation; it wasn’t that often I became turned on enough to get a hard-on in public anymore. But soon I wished it wasn’t happening. The most any of this – the over-priced drinks, the image of the stripper’s ass etched in my mind – was going to accomplish was make me poorer and more desperate to get laid. My thimble-sized drink barely numbed my doubts and misgivings. To an on-looker I was as pathetic the other three or four men sitting around the stage.

I finished my drink and took the streetcar home. As soon as I walked in the door my two half-started paintings glared at me from across the room. They looked at me as disinterestedly as the stripper had.

I went to my bedroom and got undressed and washed for bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow and I closed my eyes I saw the stripper’s hips in my mind. I got up and grabbed one of my bath towels. I’d had so much blood-flow to my dick recently it hardly took a minute to cum.

The next morning I eased myself out of comfortable dreamland by browsing social media. I looked at pictures of people I knew on my phone. It was a parade of vacations, kid’s birthday parties, pets and food. There were also posts with links to articles about political, social and environmental causes I couldn’t be bothered to read. Once I felt sufficiently guilty, I got up.

For some reason I wandered into the corner of my loft dedicated to painting before going to the kitchen to make coffee. I hadn’t worked in months and it showed in my studio’s disorder. I took my tennis racket and running shoes and some dirty dishes and beer cans to the couch and kitchen areas. I put my half-started canvases out of sight and started making a frame for a new one. It took me an hour to make the frame and another half hour to stretch and staple a blank canvas over it. When I’d finished, I checked the corners to make sure the fibers of the canvas hadn’t separated. Victory, they hadn’t.

I put the canvas on an easel ten feet from the large steel frame windows and looked at it. I thought it might look better without me touching it further. My last series of paintings, the ones hanging unsold in the hip Queen West gallery, were an experiment with space and colour. I’d tried to challenge one of the conventional rules of composition that stated that darker colours should always fall towards the bottom of a piece. The result was a collection of work with dark blues and blacks and reds bleeding down into lighter pinks, grays and yellows. I felt that a few of the pieces left the viewer with the feeling they were floating like I’d intended but the critics felt differently. One of them, writing for one of the same street newspaper with escort advertisements in the back, said the series reminded him of the inside of a burrito. (Asshole.) But I had to agree something was wrong with the series. If there wasn’t, why weren’t any of the paintings selling? Maybe I’d been too conceptual. Art was meant to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. I needed to connect with people on a visceral level. I put a coat of gesso on the canvas in front of me and went to make an espresso as continued to think.

When I came back to the studio again something strange had happened to the canvas. The primer was absorbing more quickly down the centre of the canvas than at the sides. This wasn’t that unusual, gesso always absorbed unevenly no matter how evenly it was applied or how well-stretched the canvas, but the image I saw in the pattern was. I saw a head-on view of the hips of the stripper from the night before. I hadn’t painted or even sketched figures for almost a decade. My reputation – such as it was – was as an abstract artist so what did this mean? Was I supposed to venture off into a completely new direction almost two decades into my career? The idea was absurd. My skills at representing real objects would be rusty at best; not to mention the fact that I regularly lectured my students on the merits of breaking the shackles of directly observable reality.

Then something else happened. The place where I envisioned the stripper’s crotch flipped upside down and moved as if she was standing on her head. As this happened the rest of the canvas morphed into an assortment of shapes and lines originating from her crotch. Bright reds and blues began to fill the rest of the canvas so I grabbed a tube of scarlet and ultra-marine and began mixing colours.

It was thrilling to have started working again. I thought my vision for the painting could see me through for at least a week of solid work. I felt the rush of unbridled creation again and it was heavenly.

But then I thought what had inspired the painting: at a dirty strip club and a disinterested and presumably lost woman undressing for money. I slowed my paint mixing as I kept thinking. What did it say about me, or art in general that this is how I drew my inspiration? Fortunately I was experienced enough not to pursue the question any further. I had to concentrate on my materials, on bringing my mental image to life carefully but quickly. If I didn’t, the image would soon dissolve into the sea of other concerns in my head. I’d be back surfing Facebook or porn sites and thinking about my wasteful existence in no time. Being an artist was no different from other professions in that respect: you had to check things off your to-do list and try not to get mired down in the meaning of it all if you wanted to succeed.

I worked non-stop for eight or ten hours the day after I first went to Jilly’s. Eventually I let up the pace to get some proper food and rest. Deciding when to walk away from a piece – even if for a night – was always the hardest thing for me.

I ate and slept and the next morning I woke up with renewed energy. I put in another eight hours and the routine continued for four more days. I only left the house to load up on coffee, rice cakes, almond butter and bananas, my preferred rations during periods of intensive work.

By then it was Wednesday, the day I had to teach my class at York. The nearly hour and a half commute from my house was even more annoying than usual. I was anxious over being away from my work and my re-discovered routine. Worse yet, I couldn’t really talk to my students about my new painting. How could I explain to fresh-faced, wide-eyed twenty-year-olds that I’d begun a new study of shape and line by way of sexual frustration and craven desire? I got through the class by repeating a talk on the process behind some of my older pieces. The class was visibly bored during my lecture but it beat risking my workflow by telling them the truth. The whole time I was talking I felt they could see right through me. I thought one of them must had surely seen me duck into Jilly’s and told the rest of them. Then again, how bad was what I did? Lots of people went to strip clubs. And it wasn’t like I’d even come close to my original plan of hiring a prostitute. The most I’d done was watch from a distance as a woman took her undressed to bad dance music. Big deal. Remembering my original plan made me think I’d like to know more about the history of sex work. Going to a hooker surely wasn’t always such a taboo. I went to the main library on campus and found as remote a computer stall as I could to look up books on prostitution on the subject. I entered ‘prostitution’ into the search bar, clicked ‘enter’, and got over three hundred hits returned. Many of them were books on sex workers’ rights and arguments for legalizing the sex trade. Others were histories of prostitution ranging from ancient civilizations to modern day sex tourism. One book title grabbed my attention especially. It was called Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850. I liked the sounds of it because 19th France had spawned Impressionism and I wanted to learn more about the social conditions of the period, especially its sexual mores.

I wrote down Women for Hire’s call number, found it in the stacks, and checked it out. I was eager to read it on my commute home not only for my interest in it, but also because it would keep me from checking out all the women on the bus and subway.

I got on the bus that took me to the subway back downtown. By the time I got home I’d read nearly forty pages my book and learned a number of interesting facts. One of them was that the population of Paris almost doubled between 1850 and 1870 on account of a boom in trade. As a result of this, there was a large number of young men with money to spend. Women who worked as seamstresses and chambermaids took the opportunity to make extra money by selling sex. Prostitution became such a lucrative business that regular, ‘honest’ women were indistinguishable from prostitutes, or ‘courtesans’, as they were known at the time. This climate of social ambiguity attracted the attention of artists and writers. Toulous-Lautrec, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh and Picasso all used prostitutes in their work. The poet Baudelaire said “What is art? Prostitution” and Honoré de Balzac wrote an entire novel centered on the sex trade.

I read some more Women for Hire before going to bed but didn’t recall anything more that was very interesting. The next morning I got up and went to the studio first thing. I looked at my hips painting and didn’t see anything I immediately wanted to change or expand upon. I went and made myself an espresso and came back and looked at the painting some more. Still nothing seemed glaringly wrong or in need of work. This feeling indicated to me that I needed to spend some more time away from the painting. (That or I’d lost the original thrust of the work by going to teach my class.) I put on my shorts and running shoes and headed out for a jog.

I came back from jogging an hour later feeling clear-headed and ready to work. I went straight to the studio but still nothing jumped out at from the painting. It was possible that it was almost finished but I was reluctant to think so. I wasn’t unhappy with the piece but if it was in fact finished, then what did I have to work on next beside my financial disrepair or romantic void?

I went out for lunch at my local pub and brought Women for Hire with me. I ordered a second pint after eating and read for an hour. Then I went home and fiddled around on the computer for the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening. Around 10:30 or 11:00 PM I peaked in the studio. The painting still looked docile so I went to the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed. I turned off the lights but I wasn’t tired at all. I thought about jerking off to try induce sleep but I knew that that would only make me more anxious and guilt-ridden in the morning. I decided the solution was the same as the last time I was blocked: go to Jilly’s. I dressed quickly and left the house. I brought a sketchpad and pencil with me, ready to be inspired. I went to Jilly’s the next three nights straight. I was too distracted by the naked women to actually sketch anything. I passed the days and early evenings making frames and stretching canvases in preparation to paint. Now and then I went for a jog and gradually I started sketching some ideas I had for new pieces. I made two large charcoal drawings and although I wasn’t unhappy with them, I didn’t think they were worthy of painting.

The fourth night in a row I went to Jilly’s I got wasted. It was a Monday and the drinks were half-price. There was only one girl working the stage so didn’t have much else to do. At some point in the course of the night, I felt horny and drunk enough that I decided to ask someone about finding a prostitute. I asked my waitress – the one in the short black skirt who’d served me the first night I came in – if she knew of anywhere I could find a courtesan.

“A what?” she said, turning her head and looking at me with her eyes narrowed.

“A courtesan. You know, a woman who accompanies you to court…”

She pretended not to hear or understand and walked away. I resumed drinking, then, after a few minutes, signaled her to come back again.

She came back, crossed her arms and glared at me. “What?”

I took out my sketchpad and pencil and wrote, “I’m looking for a prostitute.” I tore the page out and handed it to the waitress. As she read the note her eyes widened slightly. She turned and walked off quickly without saying anything. I watched her walk up to a bouncer sitting on one of the bar stools. She handed him the note and pointed at me. The bouncer wore a black leather jacket and his back was so meaty it looked like his ears connected directly to his shoulders. He got up from the bar stool, crumpled up my note, and walked towards me.

The bouncer got to my table and before I could say anything he grabbed my sketchpad and pencil and shoved them into my chest. With his other hand took the back of my shirt and coat collar and yanked me to my feet. “You’re out of here, fuckhead,” he said. “This isn’t that kind of place.”

“I’m just trying to paint,” I slurred as he shoved me towards the door. “I’m no different from Manet. I’m the same as Degas!”

We reached the door, which he opened with one hand and pushed me out with the other. I nearly fell down the three stairs leading down to the sidewalk and my pencil and sketchbook tumbled to the ground.

“Fucking asshole,” I muttered as I stooped to pick up my things. “You’re as bad as a yuppie with your narrow views and self-righteousness.”

Mid-lambast, the bouncer reemerged. I started to run away but he raised his hands in a non-threatening gesture. He looked up and down the street and took something out of his inside jacket pocket. He motioned me towards him and handed me a small business card. “Call this number tomorrow after you’ve sobered up,” he said.

The card was all white except for the words “First Choice Entertainment” and a phone number.

“’name’s Jimmy. Tell me where I met you and don’t let me catch you in here looking for pussy again. Got it?”

“Uh, yeah. I will…and, uh, I won’t…”

“Good. Go the fuck home and sleep it off.” He stepped back in the bar and slammed the door behind him. I quickly pocketed the card and left, looking over my shoulders to make sure no one had just seen me talk to a real-life, living, breathing pimp.

I woke up the next morning feeling badly hungover. I was so dehydrated that my tongue was caked to the roof of my mouth. I forced myself to get up and piss and refill my bedside water glass. I took two Advils from the medicine cabinet and chugged another glass of water. I went back to bed and thankfully fell back to sleep.

I woke up again an hour later feeling marginally better. I looked at my phone for my usual transition back to reality. Memories of the night before flashed in my head as I browsed pictures of my friends’ children and spouses. In my head, I saw the disgusted look of the waitresses after I’d handed her my covetous note and heard the scorn in the pimp’s voice as he said the word “pussy.”

I got up again and went to the bathroom. I tried to avoid looking at myself in the mirror as I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Then I went back to the bedroom and got dressed. I was too weak to make myself coffee so I headed downstairs to my usual café. I also wanted some sort of human interaction that wasn’t marred with sin.

I got my coffee and made sure to thank the barista extra nicely. I sat in the shop’s front window and watched people pass by outside. I finished my coffee in a half-numbed state and ordered another along with a croissant. I opened a street newspaper and flipped through it absent-mindedly as I ate and drank. I stopped at the art show reviews out of habit and there was a small description of my ongoing show. The description was so lackluster I wanted to puke. I slammed the paper down in anger and looked back out the window.

In the bottom of my eye-line, I noticed an American Apparel ad on the back of the street newspaper. The ad showed a young woman lying face down on a faux-fur rug above a hardwood floor. She wore nothing but tights and looked over her shoulder seductively. I felt a flicker in my pants and I put my left hand on my thigh. I noticed there was something flat and rectangular in my pant pocket. Slowly it dawned on me that I was wearing the same pants as the night before, that the thing in my pocket was Jimmy the pimp’s business card. In spite of myself, I got even harder knowing I could get laid with the push of a few buttons...

What the hell? Who would I be I hurting?

I got up, went back up to my loft, and called the number on the card.

As soon as it was over I tried to erase that day from my memory. Buying sex is nothing like you see on TV. She was no Julia Roberts and I was no Richard Gere. Did you know you have to pay a time and a half to get to kiss her on the mouth? It’s call it a ‘girlfriend experience.’ I declined the add-on and the sex was as unromantic as possible. All I knew about her was her name (“Destiny”) and that was likely as contrived as our meeting. But I paid the requisite hundred and fifty bucks and thrust my dick inside her all-the-same. We avoided eye contact the entire time and when I came I felt something sharp and hot in my crotch. It felt more like a blood vessel bursting than anything orgasmic.

The following day I could hardly get out of bed I was so disgusted with myself. I deleted my Facebook account to avoid a complete meltdown via self-comparison. I narrowly gathered the strength to get up and go teach my class. For some strange reason though, maybe as a way to purge myself, I told my class about the process behind my hips painting. I avoided looking at any of the female students as I spoke and I heard some snickers while my back was turned at one point. As soon as the class ended I hurried out of the room to avoid any awkward questions about my lecture.

Eventually the thought of my lecture made me feel better but not by much. I thought about Destiny, wondering where she might be at that moment. Probably injecting or smoking something in a drug-den. Or maybe lying on her back, head to the side as some other reprobate-loser fucked her. That’s just what I was, a reprobate and loser. I was a desperate outcast incapable of competing in the regular dating market so I had to resort to the illegal one. I deserved the worst kind of judgment. I imagined myself getting arrested and arraigned. I’d be trotted out in front of a judge and condemned to prison. I’d rot in a dirty like I deserved to.

Oddly, I received no judgement or condemnation for my buying sex. I went home after my class and started painting one of the charcoal drawings I’d made the week before. It was of a stripper between the neck and the solar plexus. For some reason I put the notch where the sternum and the collar bone meet beneath the breasts rather than above them. The result was the breasts (nipple-less) looked like closed eyes and the notch, a down-turned mouth. It resembled la full-body frown and enacted the feeling I got from hiring Destiny.

I worked steadily on my bodies pieces for the next six months. I painted most of them from start to completion before starting another. A few of them I bounced between, adding some details to one then another. In the beginning the work kept me from more self-reproach. Slowly I forgot about what I’d done and got lost in the technical aspects of my work. Teaching and the occasional coffee or drink with friends satisfied my need for social contact.

When I finished the series I showed it to a couple gallery owners I knew. Both of them loved it and begged me to let them show it. I chose Jeremy Espadrille’s Mercer Union in Bloordale because I thought a more down-market audience might be more receptive than the galleries on Queen.

Jeremy and I set a date for the opening and I packed up and brought my paintings to him in a rental van. But as the opening night approached I grew increasingly nervous. I thought my work was good but I worried about people asking how I’d conceived it. What was I going to say? I went to strip club? I paid marginalized or oppressed women to undress in front of me and one of them to let me fuck her?

My anxiety over grew stronger and stronger and I spent longer and longer in bed. I reactivated my Facebook account to try and distract myself but it only increased my guilt and shame. Compared to my responsible, family-having friends and family, I was horrible. In two nights’ time I’d be showered with praise from complete strangers while good, honest people sat in their living rooms or bedrooms unrecognized for their daily effort and sacrifice. The injustice of it made me nauseous.

Then an idea hit me. I thought I could relieve my guilt by inviting Destiny to the opening, If anyone asked me where I’d gotten my inspiration for the series, I’d just nod in her direction. I’d pay her for her time and not her body. In addition to being honest, hopefully this would undo the psychic damage I’d caused her. It was a beautiful solution.

The only hitch was that I’d thrown out Jimmy’s card in self-disgust after screwing Destiny and had no way of getting in touch with either of them. I decided to go down to Jilly’s to look for Jimmy. I got there and walked up to a man sitting at the bar I assumed was him based on his leather jacket and husky physique. But when I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around I discovered he was someone else. The stranger looked at me. “Whadaya want, bud?”

“I, uh, I was looking for Jimmy…”

“Jimmy don’t work here no more.”

I kicked myself again for throwing out Jimmy’s card. “Uh, do you know where I can find him?”

“What do I look like, a fuckin’ phone book?”

The man turned back around on his stool and I looked around the room hoping that Jimmy would somehow appear. Then I looked for my old waitress thinking she might know where I could find him. She seemed to have changed jobs too or else had the night off.

I wandered back outside, picturing myself at my opening surrounded by interrogators with no chance of escape. I felt light-headed and sat down on the sidewalk with my back against the outside of the building. I rubbed my eyes and temples and felt slightly better. Then a squad car drove by and I had to get up so I wouldn’t look suspicious. I considered going home before I had another thought. I could go look for Destiny at Shuter and Sherbourne. At the very least there’d be some streetwalkers there I could talk to. There couldn’t be that many prostitutes in Toronto. Surely they must all know each other somehow.

I headed towards Shuter and Sherbourne on foot. I crossed the Don Valley and the din of traffic beneath the bridge almost made me turn around. I got to the other side and felt much better in the relatively quieter streets of Corktown. Then I passed a low-income or social housing complex at Queen and Beverly. The complex consisted of two twenty-odd-storey-buildings and a parking lot and playground straddling the block between Queen and Shuter. The playground and parking lot were full of litter and debris. It looked like the kind of place I might find Destiny and I thought about cutting through to Shuter on the off chance of bumping into her. At second thought, I decided against it. It was after mid-night and the area was badly lit and dangerous looking.

I continued along Queen glancing in some bars and restaurants looking for Destiny. They all had dirty windows, little to no decoration, and all the customers seemed to be outside smoking.

A few minutes later I arrived at Sherbourne and turned north, bracing myself to interact with a prostitute in plain view. Hopefully I’d find Destiny quickly and we could go to the late night Pakistani restaurant at Dundas that all the cabbies went to.

I got to the corner and saw a couple women I assumed were hooking. I walked up to one with dyed red hair. She wore platform shoes and seemingly no pants or skirt beneath an oversized winter coat. “Hi,” I said timidly. “I was wondering if you knew a girl named Destiny. She’s got blonde hair. She’s about your height….”

The woman’s cheeks were pitted and her bug-eyes darted in all directions. She wore a thick layer of cover-up and blue-black eye-shadow. She stuck her lower jaw out and looked me up and down frowning. “Yeah I think know her maybe.” Her voice was hoarse and halting.

“Well, could you give me her phone number or tell me where she lives?”

“I’m working her bud.”

“I’ll pay you...”

“Alright. Eighty bucks.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“K Follow me.”

The woman led me away, back down Shuter in the direction I’d come from. I hoped she might take me to one of the row houses on the north side of the street but I feared otherwise. I suspected she was taking me to the apartment complex on Beverly that I’d passed on my way over. A few minutes later we arrived at the complex and she turned towards the entrance to one of the buildings. I was walked fifteen or twenty feet behind her and when I got to the door, she was already inside calling someone on the intercom to buzz us in. The inside doors buzzed and she opened them and walked through. I followed her into the elevator area and she pushed the button for one. She was even more run-down and haggard in the indoor lighting and I avoided looking at her as we waited.

The elevator came and we got inside. She pushed the button for the 22nd floor and the doors closed. As we started going up I grew nervous. Everything seemed to be going too smoothly. Why hadn’t she asked me for the money yet? “Hey,” I said, “You want the money now?”

She pointed at the security camera inside the elevator. “Later,” she said, and I felt less tense.

We got to our floor and she led me down a brown hallway with flickering lights florescent lights. We stopped at an apartment and she knocked on the door. I heard a couple people talking inside but couldn’t make out what they said. The door opened and the woman walked in. She stuck her head back out and motioned me inside.

Inside, the apartment was darkly lit. It reeked of cigarettes plus another stinging, chemical odour I couldn’t place. I saw another woman’s standing at the end of the hallway. I couldn’t see her face but she reminded me of the first woman by the way she stood. “Hey, I’m looking for Destiny,” I called to her.

“She’s down here,” she said and disappeared around a corner.

The first woman walked after her and I followed them both. I passed an open door and darkened room I assumed was the bathroom. The hallway opened up onto a living room and kitchen. All the lights were off except for the TV. I turned a corner to a second hallway and saw a door with light coming out from it at the end. “Down here,” said a voice that sounded like the second woman’s coming from inside the room.

As I stepped towards the door I heard quick footsteps approaching me from behind and I spun around. In a blur, I saw a frowning face and raised arm. The arm was holding a dark L-shaped object that came crashing down on the side of my head. I felt a brief shearing pain on the left side of my head before my legs gave out and the ground came rushing up.

I came to to the sound of birds chirping and a streetcar clanking. I was outside, evidently, but beyond that all my brain-power was directed towards the ear-splitting pain in my head. I forced my eyelids open and took in more of my surroundings.

I was lying on the ground. I shielded my eyes from what felt like equatorial mid-day sun. In the middle distance I saw the outline of trees and a row of two storey red-brick buildings. Directly in front of me there was a car tire and various pieces of litter. I realized I was outside the apartment complex at Queen and Beverly. The night’s events came back to me: looking for Destiny, following the streetwalker…

The I remembered my reason for following the streetwalker and pushed myself upright against the wall behind me. My natural painkillers must have kicked in because the pain in my head lifted and in its place a lightness and euphoric feeling took shape. I couldn’t remember feeling felt such a physical joy since my first serious girlfriend, Alice Dreifelds. We’d gone to art school together and started a relationship after a protracted flirtation in Sculpture I. I remembered lying in bed with her on a spring morning similar to this one. The sun crept through the curtains in her apartment on the Grange and everything felt dewy and new. She was the first person to encourage me to treat art as a career, to take myself and my work seriously. Of course I grew impatient for success and blamed her for hampering my productivity. I broke up with her over tea and pastries at a Chinese bakery on Baldwin after around a year of seeing each other.

But in my endorphin-addled state I didn’t dwell in the negatives of the memory. Instead, I just remembered the pleasure of that spring morning in bed with Amber, the pleasure of knowing what was in front of me and being confident I could undertake it successfully. I decided I didn’t need to explain my methods to anyone. That was the point of art, really, to stimulate the imagination. If anyone asked what had inspired my bodies’ series I’d tell them whatever popped into my head at that time. Maybe I’d tell them I that it was inspired by strippers and prostitutes; maybe I’d tell them that they were inspired by my first girlfriend. Both were decently honest answers. Art was meant to express the inexpressible and explain the inexplicable. I couldn’t give them simple, comfortable answers because there weren’t any.

I got to my feet not only unafraid but excited to go to my opening. I breathed in the morning air and felt as tall as the trees. Then I took another breath and noticed an unpleasant odour. I followed the scent downwards and was shocked: I’d shit myself in my sleep.

#amwriting #short story #realistic fiction

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