Katerina Vorontsov
March 20, 2020 3:56 PM
Art Club (Room Four) by Katerina Vorontsov
The first time, Katya thought, she had been too ambitious in her ideas for the art club. She had imagined it as something like a salon, with her coordinating but everyone contributing knowledge and skill to the whole group. That, however, had been something of an overreach, at least for most people - and, to an extent, for her as well. She had been a first year, only modestly talented, with only moderately good English and no experience trying to lead things. It had been a mess, especially since she had only done it for spite.This time, she had decided, she was going to take another approach. She had decided to divide meetings into two parts: a first part, with light refreshments, where anyone was welcome to either share a piece of art they had been working on - in any medium; drawing, the different kinds of painting, the different kinds of needlework, photography, ceramics, whatever - or just enjoy refreshments and look at other people's pieces. Then, in the second part of the meeting, Katya would offer a short presentation to offer inspiration to anyone who wanted it, and then they all just...worked on art until the end of the meeting or until they felt ready to leave.
It was a bit of a challenge for her to run it this way for two reasons. One was that it felt odd to just...let a bunch of people do what they wanted in the same space, and call it an activity. Not having a carefully controlled and planned program felt unnatural to her, but it was easier to work with and more likely to get an audience, which increased her chances of being named prefect. The other reason, though, involved doing more work, rather than feeling she wasn't doing enough: she always had to make sure she had enough new pieces, or at least pieces with noticeable progress on them, to ensure there was something for people to look at during the first part of the meeting if no-one else brought anything. Meetings were only once a fortnight, but this was still, as it turned out, a lot of work. Katya enjoyed art, and believed she had reasonable skill in a few kinds of it, but producing substantial amounts of quality work that fast, while also keeping up with the degree of studying she needed to do for her English classes and keeping up with her other languages, would, she thought, have been a challenge even for a professional. For the last meeting before Christmas, when she had been so nervous about the need to do some higher-level options on her midterms that she had started feeling ill at random times for no clear reason, she had taken the Russian rough draft of one of her essays, copied part of it, many sizes larger than the original, in Cyrillic script with paintbrushes and shimmering peacock-overtoned blue-green paint, glued bits of feathers onto the large parchment, and called that art. Tatya - probably the only person at Sonora who could read handwritten, cursive Russian well enough to realize what it was - had laughed, thinking it was a joke, and had then apologized on and off for the entirety of the midterm break after Katya had blown up at her for it after that meeting.
This time, however, she had no need to resort to anything as outlandish as that. She had completed two small paintings over the holidays - a pastel study of the stark beauty of the park around her house in the snow, and a watercolor of the village with all the lights and garlands of Rozhdestvo - and had finished an embroidery project she had started several months later, a complicated representation of the Sun Chariot all in red - a copy of a traditional pattern from the north of Russia. She had the small staff of elves assisting her display these spaced well apart, with empty easels between them for anyone else who wished to use. She fussed over the exact placement of furniture in the art room and refreshments on the tables, and then the elves were gone and she was in place just in time to start welcoming people to the first part of the meeting with a smile.
"I hope all were able to do art during the holiday," she said to the room in general, her grammar rising significantly in quality in a rehearsed speech, once it was time to start. "I had time - I made these paintings, this sewing," she told them. She tried not to start meetings with comments on her own work, but at first meetings like this, it seemed important - especially after the bizarre thing she had put up, though not discussed at all unless directly questioned, last time. "These are all things from my home - that was our tree for - you say Christmas. We say Rozhdestvo. That is my village - it is a watercolor. And this is sewing in a way that is done in Russia. Red is the color of beauty," she added helpfully. "Anyone else wish to show art?"
Once she thought everyone who wanted to show something had, she took the floor again. "Thank you all - now we can make art until time to leave. If anyone needs inspirations - maybe try to make the same picture with watercolor, but one time, use wet-on-dry, and on another, use wet-on-wet," she suggested. "See how they look. I will help if you want to try but do not know how," she added, and then moved over to the work area to start working on her own next project until someone asked her about watercolor techniques.
Subthreads: What did I miss? [Katerina] by Alexander Pierce-Beales with Katerina Vorontsov
Came for the Roommate, Stayed for the Art by Lyssa Fitzgerald with Katerina Vorontsov, Jessica Hayles
Supporting a friend by Allegra Brockert with Nathaniel Mordue
Bettering my chances by Topaz Brockert
Living the dream. by Tatiana Vorontsova
16
Katerina Vorontsov
Art Club (Room Four)
1418
1
5
Allegra Brockert
April 12, 2020 4:11 PM
Supporting a friend by Allegra Brockert
Allegra was generally a fairly shy person and not someone who would normally join a club. However, this was a club that Katerina had started and she wanted to support her friend so she came. Fortunately for her, her favorite hobbies were considered art forms. She loved to quilt and crochet and generally, the finished products made Allegra feel a sense of pride. It made her so happy to see Uriah or her little cousins using the baby blankets she had made them when they were born. Plus, she actually felt sort of an attachment to things she made even though she made stuff for other people too.Currently, she was working on a quilt for Emerald's wedding present. The Crotalus wasn't sure whether or not Winston would like it but she knew that her cousin would know that it came from the heart and appreciate it.
However, Allegra was probably not ever going to be comfortable showing off her work to a bunch of people she didn't know and wasn't very at ease with. What if they criticized it. Especially since the fourth year had just spotted Topaz here. She was even less comfortable sharing things and speaking in front of her cousin than she was people she didn't know. Topaz would say something nasty to her, to embarrass her and make her feel bad about herself, just for the sake of it whether or not the Aladren actually thought Allegra's quilt was ugly.
And what was Topaz doing here anyway? The Crotalus sincerely doubted it was to support Katerina since her cousin wasn't....well, the supportive type. Something more sinister or at least more self-serving was probably going on. This was Topaz after all.
Allegra also noticed that her cousin was carrying a dead squirrel. Great, so this was a taxidermy thing. Gross. Well, she supposed it was better than a "harass Allegra" thing. Her cousin was probably here to show them the" wonders of her art form" or something like that. She was sure that was what Topaz would claim. That or supporting Katerina. The former seemed more...plausible as the truth.
And she really really did not want to know how that squirrel came to be dead either. Aside from a family owl who'd died, the Crotalus was pretty sure that Topaz was poisoning creatures in order to stuff them.
The club meeting began with people showing their art work. Katerina had done a lovely painting and some sewing and then Lyssa got up and shared a poem. Once the sharing was done and they went to work on their own projects, Allegra retreated into a corner with her quilt, hoping that Topaz would be too caught up in stuffing that poor squirrel to bother her.
She was so caught up in her quilting that she barely noticed when someone came up to her. "Oh, hi. Sorry, I was just really into my project."
11
Allegra Brockert
Supporting a friend
1426
Allegra Brockert
0
5
Nathaniel Mordue
April 15, 2020 4:03 PM
Trying to convince a cousin. by Nathaniel Mordue
There were debates, going back as far as the invention of the camera, as far as Nathaniel could tell, about whether photography counted as an art. As far as Nathaniel was concerned, these debates were absurd. Photography was not just a matter of pointing a camera at something and clicking a button - any three-year-old child could do that. Real photography - especially that at the highest levels, beyond what Nathaniel could even do now, though he was working on it; it was a relief, having a project other than trying to figure out how to save his family or how to get through another summer like last one, and he managed to spend a fair amount of time on it, despite CATS and his damned incessant bouts of exhaustion - required quite as much of a grasp of potions as any painter used, and a decent bit of charm's work, and more besides. All this came before, of course, the issues of lighting and composition, and choosing exactly which lenses and potion variations to use, and....Well, in better times, he could have given a spirited defense of why photography was art. At the moment, he would still defend the notion that it was at least as much of an art as anything else if pressed, but he was mostly going to the Art Club because its founder was in Sylvia's clique and because he thought going to a club was the kind of thing that would help convince Sylvia she didn't need to worry so much about him.
His mother didn't know about his condition, really. He had never seen fit to inform her of the effect her behavior, along with that of his uncle and brother and Sylvia, had had on him - something he regretted not doing last year, after the shock he had given Sylvia by accident had clued him in to how effective it might have been, but which there was no good in doing now. She had enough to worry about, he thought, just having Jeremy for an estranged son, without knowing Nathaniel's brain was wrong - and that was without knowing much about Jeremy was actually doing these days. Jeremy was just someone who it was natural to be concerned about, he thought, even when you weren't living witness to his actual behavior. Sylvia, however...Nathaniel had gone out of his way to tell her that it wasn't her fault, what had happened to him, but she still worried about him, as though still afraid he might do something untoward if not carefully watched and handled with the finest of cotton gloves, and he felt wretched about it. He supposed there was a part of him that was still angry with her, too, just as much as with his mother, but it was not substantial enough for him to want to cause her anxiety. He didn't want revenge against Sylvia or his mother - only against the men. So he tried to give the women as little cause for worry as he could.
The group was not entirely composed of girls - his unlikely protege Alexander showed up late, he noticed, with a nod to the boy - but they easily made up a majority. On the whole, raised for the most part by a single mother and with his closest relationships being her, his female cousin, and his female therapist, he did not mind the company of women. The company of Lyssa Fitzgerald, however, was another matter entirely, and he made a point of steering clear, especially after she read her poem. He thought he would have steered clear even had she been someone else, after that; he had discovered with Alexander that the company of someone who gave any indication they might Understand could be even more of a knife to the gut than that of someone who clearly didn't understand at all. Instead, also avoiding Tatiana Vorontsov for the moment, he wandered back into the company of the prettiest of the Miss Brockerts.
It was odd, he thought, how differently girls could make impressions. Tatiana and Allegra actually looked somewhat alike, now that he thought of it - perhaps he had a liking for not-blonde hair and pale eyes - but he didn't think the same things at all of them. He could imagine kissing either, but it was...all different just the same. Tatiana was the sort of girl he, at least, could imagine shoving up against things, and being shoved in return; he also fancied that a significantly closer acquaintance with her, for some reason, would necessarily involve laughter or else an abrupt end to her interest in the acquaintance. Allegra was...not that sort of girl, at least in his head. More of a fragile little porcelain doll, someone who seemed like she ought to be protected and indulged and handled as though she might break - the sort of girl who (had things gone differently) he might have married, then inevitably have made miserable because he was a wretched excuse for a person and could only keep up an illusion he was anything else for so long. Only Sylvia, he thought, could ever get particularly close to him - in the emotional sense only, of course - and still care much for what she saw; he supposed it was down to childhood attachments, plus the fact that he - as far as she knew - almost invariably did what she said. Sylvia had always, thought, been something of an exemplar of the answer to the old riddle about what women wanted most, even if she was clever enough not to show it too clearly....
However, with the way things had gone, he doubted he would ever marry, and if he did, it would be years and years from now. Before, he had been the primary heir to a substantial fortune; his mother could have publicly kept him up for decades, really, had he been determined to make a shiftless fool of himself. Now...well, he could not say for sure that his uncle had not changed his will to include Nathaniel and Jeremy, but he doubted it - he expected his uncle might support them through university, and maybe finance housing for them if they took positions in the world which were approved of by Uncle Alexander and which benefited Uncle Alexander in some way, but that would probably be all - and he found it even more unlikely that Simon would countenance relinquishing enough of his own future shares to make Nathaniel and Jeremy particularly appealing prospects. There were only so many pure-blood men on the market, it was true, but there were also only so many heiresses, and Mama and Father had doubtless cast such a shadow over Nathaniel and Jeremy both that said heiresses (or rather, said heiresses' fathers) would doubtless look elsewhere for respectable but relatively impoverished husbands. Eventually, some younger daughters of some family might get stuck with them, but while Allegra Brockert was not an heiress in particular, nor was she insignificant enough, as Brockerts went, to end up betrothed to someone supporting himself on seven thousand a year replicating things in triplicate for the government or something else equally as absurd, or only a very little bit less so. So it was quite safe to speak to her with no fear of marriage.
"Good evening, Miss Brockert," he said.
She seemed startled, further supporting his idea of her as delicate. Though it was curious that she of all people would be working on quilts. Quilts went on beds, which were not a subject to think of in company....
Dear Merlin, he could not wait until he was thirty. Surely by then he would be sufficiently decrepit to keep That Subject off his mind at times when he was not exhausted for no reason the Healers could figure out and which Dr. Greene would therefore insist was a side effect of ongoing nervous depression. It was not as if the poor girl was sewing a trousseau - and if she was, well, good for her and her fiance. Plus, he was fairly sure he had seen a quilt in a museum once, so they apparently did count as art at least as much as his photographs.
He smiled as he said, "I'm sorry to have interrupted you. It's nice to see you again." She was, at least, someone in this room who was perfectly respectable to associate with and who had no desire to slap him. As far as he knew, anyway. "A new project, or an ongoing one?"
OOC: Nathaniel's "seven thousand a year" is based on the Harry Potter Lexicon's currency converter; as of today, 7000 galleons would be the equivalent of a bit more than $43,000. Where the author lives, at least, this is a perfectly livable income, especially if you own your own home and are not in a place with particularly high property taxes, but it would not support a lifestyle which involves ordering custom gowns and throwing pureblood parties to wear them to on a regular basis.
16
Nathaniel Mordue
Trying to convince a cousin.
1412
Nathaniel Mordue
0
5
Allegra Brockert
April 20, 2020 2:20 PM
I wish I could convince mine to go away. by Allegra Brockert
Allegra smiled pleasantly when she saw who had approached her. Nathaniel Mordue was decidedly someone she found to be decent company so she was not just relieved-that it wasn't Topaz, who seemed to be happily stuffing her squirrel-but relatively pleased. He was fairly respectable-despite any rumors to the contrary, he was Sylvia's cousin and therefore, Allegra had to think of him as such because Sylvia would not take kindly to the fourth year thinking any other way-and fairly...nice, based on being a Teppenpaw and previous experience.Which mattered a good deal more than one might think. When one had spent their entire life tormented by someone, kindness went a long way. Honestly, Nathaniel and Sylvia were so lucky to have each other, rather than a cousin who was evil incarnate. Of course, Allegra also had Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire, as well as her own sisters, but to have a cousin your own exact age who was your best friend rather than your worst nightmare was something that the Crotalus could only imagine.
Also, one did not want to marry a "brute" as Esme called Uncle Eustace. One wanted to find a husband who was respectable and kind and that loved and cared for you like her cousin Owen did with Jemima. Not one that treated you with disdain and condescension-at best-like Uncle Eustace did Aunt Helena. Her uncle was just as bad as Topaz in his way, only he mostly ignored Allegra, thank Merlin. He still bullied her little brothers, even though Uriah was only two. Uncle Eustace criticize Uriah's weight-she was given the impression that was why Aunt Helena was so thin too- as well as referring to Olaf as a little nerd. And not in a good way as in Uncle Eustace's world, being a nerd was a terrible crime against nature. Not that Olaf cared.
Honestly, Allegra admired her six year old brother's...ability not to care what others think. The fourth year knew there were opinions she shouldn't care about like those of either non-members of society or those of terrible people but still, she wanted to be liked. Besides, when you heard negative things about yourself for so long, you started to believe them. That was certainly the case with Sapphire. Allegra felt the second year was much smarter than Topaz or Aunt Opal or Sapphire herself gave her credit for.
"Good evening Mr. Mordue." The Crotalus replied. She blushed when Nathaniel said it was nice to see her again. Okay, yes, they saw each other in class most days but to have someone say it was nice to see her felt good. "It's nice to see you too."
She gestured towards the quilt. "It's a wedding gift for my cousin Emerald. I've been working on it all year. Do you have work displayed or something you're working on?"
11
Allegra Brockert
I wish I could convince mine to go away.
1426
0
5
Nathaniel Mordue
April 23, 2020 1:28 PM
Just bring her around me. Everyone around me goes away sooner or later. by Nathaniel Mordue
Emerald. Yes, that would be Emerald Brockert - one of the gemstones, he thought, suppressing a smile at the memory of Sylvia reminding him of the two sets and how they were related to each other and the headmaster. The vowels were easier to put ages to (Allegra's letter came first in the alphabet, and he could only assume someone obsessive-compulsive enough to follow such a scheme would do so in alphabetical order), but he knew Emerald had left with Simon, as the wedding Allegra was referring to was supposed, as far as he knew, to feature Simon's old roommate in the insignificant bit part of 'the groom'."All I know is, I'm sorry for the man," Simon had said over the summer, between themselves after a larger discussion had touched on the issue; since Nathaniel had used Simon as his ambassador to worm his way back into Uncle Alexander's good graces last year (as he had known he could never pull off the full act himself), Simon seemed to think this meant they had some kind of slight bond, Nathaniel thought. Or else he assumed Nathaniel would be too grateful to have a place in the family to ever think to carry tales. Or he was just an idiot. "We finally get out of school - and to jump straight into marriage? I suppose it's necessary, that 'aunt' of his might put something even worse in his cup than they say she did in his cousin's if he doesn't get started on half a dozen sons right off - but I'm damned glad it's not me. Not yet, anyway."
Eventually, of course, it would have to be; Uncle Alexander would probably do to Nathaniel and Jeremy what Simon thought the Mrs. Pierce Who Oughtn't Have Been A Mrs. Pierce would do to Winston if it ever crossed Uncle Alexander's mind that Nathaniel and Jeremy might become the sole people capable of carrying on the name Mordue. Better to have the line vanish completely than have it belong only to them, he expected - and, to be fair, Nathaniel couldn't argue that from the positions they'd all been raised to take, it did seem like the more prudent decision. However, since Simon would inevitably, as the heir, end up married and under significant pressure to produce half a dozen respectable sons of his own, to blot out all the marks on the family honor put there by Nathaniel's immediate family unit by becoming the very standard-bearers of an army of propriety, Nathaniel expected he and his brother were reasonably safe for now.
"I brought some prints," he said, nodding to a position on the other side of the room. He had not bothered to present them himself, but they were over there. "I thought it might not be the best idea to try to work on photographs in here, though, in all this light and with so many people - the potions and all, you know." Especially since he had started experimenting with them; sometimes he got something interesting, but other times, he merely ended up producing massive amounts of foul-smelling smoke, or else stains on the floor - or, on one memorable occasion, the ceiling. It was not a very pro-social endeavor. "So at this point, I'm just socializing," he admitted with a self-deprecating smile. "Winston and Miss Emerald have set a date, then? If you are allowed to say," he added, remembering that some people could be very peculiar about these things. "I wouldn't ask you to break a confidence, of course."
16
Nathaniel Mordue
Just bring her around me. Everyone around me goes away sooner or later.
1412
0
5