Jane Carey
July 26, 2011 8:49 PM
Painting the Future (Room Four) by Jane Carey
After her Transfiguration class was over, Jane found herself without anything pressing to do, and so wandered up to the painting room. It took on the form it always did for her, though she wasn’t sure if it would look different if someone else arrived wanting to paint first and had a different idea of what a room for that should look like. It was supposed to provide museums and scenery, but perhaps there was a default and she was invoking it, and if not, how did that....There was a great deal about this series of rooms she didn’t understand, and all of it piqued her interest. She knew she wasn’t the only one, either, because she’d run into her little cousin Arthur here a few times last year, and he had explained some experiments he was attempting with the Quidditch room. She’d given him a few tips based on her knowledge of the kind of magic being used here, but didn’t really think it would have gotten him any further than he had been. There were just too many things she hadn’t learned yet – and might never learn. She didn’t think she would ever give up studying entirely, but she remembered how Father, whose education hadn’t been as exhaustive as hers and Edmond’s, had made the comment during a suppertime conversation over the summer that there were things no one knew or understood, and too many things that were known for any one person to ever know them all.
For now, then, she was all right with the room simply working so long as it continued to do so, filing the thought about the how in the back of her mind the way she did every time she came in and it occurred to her again. She looked toward the low table where she usually worked for a moment, but then instead went to one of the taller easels, sitting on a stool and picking a brush and a color to start with without knowing what she was painting.
It wasn’t as much as it had been earlier, but she still felt…disconnected, a little, not quite dreamy, but not really fully in tune with her surroundings. Here, with the faint murmur of portraits and the smell of paint, she didn’t have to try to focus so much and end up just feeling grumpy and like she was going to have a headache soon.
It was getting closer to midterm. It wasn’t a thought she enjoyed. Edmond would turn seventeen. Mother would have been gone a year. It wouldn’t be a total change – her brother would still definitely live here and at home for another year after that, maybe even longer if his stupid blood sister could keep herself from being run out of the country, and no one could be so vulgar as to even think of trying, short of potential for an alliance so strong she couldn’t think of what it might be, to force Father to remarry for another two years at least – but it would mean that there couldn’t be any illusions that things weren’t what they had been. Not knowing what that might mean didn’t make the thought any more comforting, either.
Over the summer, things had been almost stable. They had found a routine close to the one they’d had, and it had been good enough for everyone to get by. In a way, Sonora had helped, since she’d become used to greater freedom than Mother had allowed them while she was at school and hadn’t found it as difficult to get used to Father falling somewhere between the two extremes as she might have otherwise. If it had gone on for a few years, it might have been all right, and easier to adjust to the inevitable changes of growing up, but it all felt like it was happening too fast to her.
And she couldn’t say anything. Everyone else had problems, too. Father had nearly died, come close enough that he still walked with a stick at home if not in public, and Edmond had been so far off balance for a long time that he’d barely seemed like himself for a time. To admit that she just wanted things to stay like they were for longer before they all changed again would be wrong, burdening everyone else with worrying about that when there were already so many other things to worry about….
She looked at the canvas and was able to make out the shape of a hallway. Interesting. She wondered what that could mean. With a shrug, she put a brush in another color and kept working. This was peaceful, and she couldn’t ask much more than that of anything, at least not today. So long as it wasn’t as loud and chaotic as a classroom, she was going to be content with it until her head cleared up a little and she could read.
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Jane Carey
Painting the Future (Room Four)
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Jane Carey
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Jethro Smythe
August 03, 2011 10:28 AM
Sorry to Interupt by Jethro Smythe
Since the first time he had encountered Jane Carey in the arts room, Jethro had wandered there on a few subsequent occasions. He was content enough, when finding himself there alone, to sit and paint a while, continuing to improve upon his technique. He was, however, a shade more than content when he arrived at the room to find it already occupied by the same student whose company he'd previously enjoyed there. The fifth year didn't really understand what other people meant when they professed emotions, but his fortune at discovering Jane Carey's presence was similar in his mind to the lightness of spirit he'd enjoyed on producing a patronus for the first time. Both occasions shared similar qualities, of being initially viewed as unlikely to be successful - finding Jane was actually more likely than Jethro producing a patronus, the Crotalus thought, but both had been possible eventually - with an outcome both unexpected and welcomed.Quietly entering the room so as not to disturb an artist at work, Jethro took a few hesitant steps forward before clearing his throat. "I'm very sorry to interrupt," he said, and he was sorry to disturb her, but he could hardly make his presence known otherwise. "Would you mind it if I joined you for a while?" Despite her willingness to spend time with him before, Jethro did not want to assume that Jane would always welcome his prsence. He was perfectly accustomed to people telling him to go away, and consequently did not take offense if a person preferred to keep her solitude. Just because he was keen to spend time with Jane - one of the few people who'd met who didn't seem displeased to see him - that didn't necessarily mean that the sentiment was reciprocated. He had come foremostly to see whether Jane would be there, and only secondarily to paint. Therefore his primary objective had already been met, and thus he could hardly lament her for disallowing him to complete the less sought article on his agenda.
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Jethro Smythe
Sorry to Interupt
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Jethro Smythe
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Jane
August 04, 2011 11:33 AM
It's all right by Jane
Jane tensed slightly when she heard footsteps behind her, but she turned it into another brush stroke. She hadn’t thought that she might feel uneasy about having her back mostly to the door when she came in, hadn’t really been thinking at all, but she wasn’t quite able to be paranoid here. Maybe the paint fumes were starting to go to her head, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t connect right, and she couldn’t even find the question of who else was here very interesting at the moment. That, she supposed, was a perk of not really having any enemies.She felt herself jump a little, though, at being spoken to, though that was silly under the circumstances. It would have been a little peculiar for someone to just come in and not so much as acknowledge that someone else was there. Doable, especially if they were both intent on their separate art projects, but a little peculiar, a little awkward, especially since she wasn’t all that focused on what she was doing, merely working on it as something to keep her hands occupied for a while. Recognizing Jethro’s voice, she turned on her stool with a smile, shaking her head.
“Not at all,” she said, tilting her head slightly toward one of the other easels. “Please, do.”
It wasn’t, after all, as if it were her room, and she didn’t usually mind Jethro’s company. She couldn’t say she would have been thrilled to have worked with him on a major class project, though she would have done so if it had come to that, but as someone to paint with or talk to at an event, they got along, she thought, and pretty well.
“Do you know what you want to paint?” she asked. “I didn’t, when I started this.” She still had no idea why she was painting a hallway, or even where the hallway was. Maybe it was from the main estate she’d visited over the summer, or maybe it was something she was just making up, she wasn’t sure about that. She could usually remember her way around a place once she had been there, but remembering the details of a specific room or section, at least consciously, was something she had to work at, deliberately make herself note and recall later. Generally speaking, the décor was just the décor to her, not really very noticed for its own sake, though she had been taught to read things into it.
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Jane
It's all right
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Jane
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Jethro
August 07, 2011 2:46 PM
I'm pleased to hear it by Jethro
Jane either didn't mind Jethro being there, or was too polite to say so. Either way, he progressed a little further towards her and, as she was set up at an easel, he did likewise, sitting at such an angle that enabled them to talk easily. Jane evidently didn't mind talking as she asked whether Jethro knew what he was going to paint, and explained that her own artwork's origin was unknown. "I haven't thought about what I'm going to paint," Jethro replied. "Usually I just paint what I see in front of me. I have tried making something up but I don't seem to be as proficient at that," he admitted. He also wasn't very good at imagining what to paint - once he had started looking at things around him, that was all he could think of."I was going to start changing colors of things," he shared one of his ideas with Jane. "It's not the same as painting something that isn't there at all, or painting from memory like you," he said, recalling how Jane had painted a night sky from memory on a previous occasion, "but it uses a bit more imagination than just copying things." For example, if he wanted to paint in blue when the actual item was red, he had to use his imagination to create all the right shades and tones. "Is that from memory, too?" he asked Jane, nodding towards her current painting of a hallway.
Looking up for inspiration for his own painting, Jethro's eyes landed on one of the portraits in the room, on the wall not far from him. Its owner seemed to have deserted it, but the frame was large and ornate, and held within it an equally ornate upholstered chair, somewhat reminiscient of the furniture in his great grandfather's home. The frame of the picture was gold, the wall behind it a pale brown, and the chair within was deep blue. Therefore, Jethro began mixing greens together in a palette.
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Jethro
I'm pleased to hear it
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Jethro
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Jane
August 13, 2011 12:21 AM
Then we shall continue to get along very well by Jane
“Yes, it sounds like it,” Jane said to Jethro’s assertion that changing the color of copied objects would be a bit more creative than just copying them. It wasn’t something she would have thought of herself, but she could see how that could have interesting results, depending on what colors were used, what they suggested. Orange water, brilliant red skies….She was half-inclined to try that, actually. A landscape in the colors of fire, all the subtle reds and yellows and golds – and hints of blue. Maybe it would be easier with a candle, or better yet an actual fire, before her, or at least had seen one very recently. It would be something to do over midterm, since she expected she would be punished for conjuring even a small flame here, especially with the paint. “It just gave me an idea, actually,” she added with a smile. It wasn’t proper to take an idea without acknowledging it source in most cases, and this one had been lifted directly enough from his comment for that to seem necessary to her. Plus, while Jethro didn’t seem to lack contentment with his situation, he also didn’t seem to think he had good ideas, and she liked to be encouraging.
Asked about the painting she was already working on, she hesitated for a second before she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. I might be making it up from a few different halls, but I don’t think it’s one I’ve seen really.”
At home – in the old days, anyway; she didn’t know how it would be now – it would have been analyzed, and conclusions about her drawn. She didn’t think she was very good at that sort of thinking, though, so what that implied about her personality and mental state wasn’t something she thought she was going to be able to reason out. Luckily, she had finally decided she didn’t really think that sort of thing worked anyway.
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Jane
Then we shall continue to get along very well
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Jane
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