#Warehouse painters near me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

joshslater · 2 years

Text

A Star is Born

Similar stories and bonus material on my Patreon.

"It's not just porn. The adult industry is much more than that. Unlike Hollywood there is room for more narrow interests, and more diversity in actors. Obviously the revenue per title is smaller, but the production overhead is too, so you could still get some decent cash."

I had changed to my sincere voice, somewhat undercut by the venue and the thumping music in the nightclub, but otherwise I had stacked everything I could against him.

"I don't know, man." He was still unconvinced, but I knew now it was self-doubt, not stigma that held him back. He didn't think he had neither the looks nor the body.

"You're exactly what I need. You don't even have to be naked. $200 for a few minutes of dry humping. Then we can see what the response is."

He sat silent, nodding slightly to the music and making up his mind. "What would your mates say?" I asked, already knowing the answer. In his friend circle he would move up in rank, being seen as desirable and virile.

"Ok, I'll do it."

The first shoot I keep very much on his terms. We have a large couple of warehouses in the old paint factory that closed where we can fit a lot of different sets, though you can't use two sets near each other due to the noise. I made sure the studio was empty by the time he arrived to avoid any second thoughts. I let him use his own clothes for the same reason. We go to the "boy room" set and I hand him a baseball bat. "Just walk in through the door, pick up the bat, put it between your legs, and grind on it for a bit. Just pretend it's the best fucking experience you've ever had."

I take the camera and he awkwardly follows my instructions. It's very stiff up until the bat is between his legs, when suddenly his whole performance changes. He slowly teases the bat in and out, polishes the base of the handle with one hand, keeps the bat in place with both legs and moves his hands like his jacking off a huge wooden dick, rhythmically buckles his whole body while riding that bat, in and out, while his ever louder moans turn into an uncontrolled scream of pleasure as he comes in his jeans.

He's trapped.

He's looking confused, shocked almost, as I wrap up the shoot. He's barely listening to what I tell him about publishing dates and payment details, as he is walking behind me toward the exit with a dazed look on his face. He just can't believe what he had just done. Not the recording of erotic content for the internet, well only partially, but mostly that he would be so good at it. He'd bragged of course to his group of mates what a stud he was, like they all did, but any of the girls he'd slept with would rate him "fine" at best, and he knew that. But here he had been like possessed by a gogo dancer.

There isn't any visible cum stain on his jeans yet when I take the bat from him and tell him goodbye. It will probably not soak through at all, but it will be on his mind all the way home. There will be a lingering feeling of unease, pride, confusion, and horniness that he can't shake over the following days. He'll have boners more often than even as a teen, and jack off multiple times a day. Every time with a big release and trembling orgasm. He might hook up with some of the girls he knows to relieve his constant horniness, and find that he is a much better lover than he used to be, but can't last very long. Most importantly it will only give him a very short-lived relief.

By the time I call him a week or so later he's desperate to film. I ask him to come in later that afternoon, making him disrupt whatever else he has already planned. He shows up right on time though, slightly out of breath, and with a visible bulge in his jeans. This time there are a few people around in the studio. A painter is finishing up the new frat room set, dirtying the area around a light switch with a paint-dipped sponge as we walk by. Once we carefully pass by the "boy room" set a pair of twinks are fucking on the bed surrounded by a cameraman, a boom boy, and the director. He's torn between his old impulse to look away in modesty and his new one to see as much as possible. He doesn't slow down, but he is taking in everything.

I lead him to our private gym. It doubles as a movie set, but all the equipment there is legit and used by all the talent in between shoots. "The guy on top is Xander XeXy," I tell him.

"What?" He looks confused.

"The guy you watched in the room I filmed you in. He's been trending a lot." I can see reality intruding. He realizes this is a business with porn actors doing porny things, seen by the public. "Oh. OK."

He doesn't follow up so I move on to our business at hand. I hand him his next outfit, a maroon sweatshirt, grey gym shorts, white crew socks, and a pair of Nike sneakers with orange details. No underwear. The sweatshirt has a yellow sigil printed on the front looking like any college emblem, unless you read the "Professional Porn Actor" around the rim of the sigil. At first he looks a bit lost, like he's wondering where he'd change outfit, until he realizes we just walked past two naked men fucking.

He gets naked and his dick stands attention as soon as it's out of his briefs. He doesn't look at me, awkward about being alone with a man, naked and with a boner, for the first time in his life. The moment he lets go of the grey sweatpant shorts, the tent his erect dick made collapses and the dick hangs down one of the shorts legs. It's the same size as when it was erect though.

I pick up the camera and start shooting, directing him to get onto the treadmill and start running. His sloppy dick isn't really visible through the thick shorts fabric, but you can see from the movement that it's swinging inside. After that warmup I continue to direct him on what equipment to use, what exercises to do, and with what configuration. Light weights, many repetitions. I however ask him to repeat the sets several times to give me multiple camera angles to cut between. At least that's what I tell him. Then when he is all damp and flush after the thorough session I tell him to start over from the beginning and do all of them once more. This is the only usable footage, because otherwise it would be obvious how much he's changed in just two hours.

He looks about the same on the treadmill, though way more athletic, an inch wider shoulders and a few inches shorter, with his dick flopping around. Then it starts getting interesting. During squats we can see a tent forming, and by the time we're recording bench presses there is a very noticeable straining of fabric going on. Much bigger than was going on before, though perhaps unsurprising given the size of his now much larger flaccid dick.

We move to the locker room set and I have him stretch a bit, feeling himself up after the workout, before sitting down and cool for a bit. Then on the bench he starts to tease out his rock-hard dick from his shorts. He takes the balls out too and just stares at them for a bit. I'm still recording of course, but I haven't told him to do this. He doesn't know why he did it. "It's what would happen in a porno, and we're recording one," is how he rationalizes it for himself. At the same time he wonders why he did it unprompted. Deeper yet he is confused about how his dick is suddenly way larger than when he stepped out of his jeans just hours ago.

He grabs it, leans back against the lockers, and begins to stroke himself. It is already slippery from sweat and pre, and makes a wet noise as he lets his hand move up and down the shaft. As the shoot before he begins to moan loudly, and goes on for a good 5 minutes until he erupts in shot after shot of cum landing on his sweatshirt and his shorts. As before he is looking shocked and confused as I wrap up the shoot and he finds himself on a porn set, drenched in sweat, and with several ropes of cum on his clothes.

He slowly puts his deflating dick back into the shorts while I come to the rescue with a towel to clean up the worst of the cum. I tell him it was great, that he's a real natural, while I nudge him to his feet and walk him back out through the studio. I tell him he should consider doing workouts regularly. That he looked great doing them here and people would love watching him doing more. He's still in that post-orgasm glow, but nods politely while looking at the now empty sets to see if he can get another glimpse of any action. At the entrance I hand him a promo card for the Xander XeXy series and thank him once again. He's well out the door before he'll starts to wonder what happened to his old clothes, deciding to pick them up another time.

He'll be hard again before he gets home, and he'll be self-conscious about the big dick being hard to miss as it moves around unrestrained, bouncing against the fabric of the shorts. Then he'll have a few days of uncomfortable discoveries. He's just as horny as before, but instead of constantly orgasming and getting hard again he's lasting much, much longer. He's not interested in getting together with any of the girls he has on speed dial to ease hard dick issues though. Nor does his usual porn appeal to him. Instead he's just lying in bed, pumping himself for an hour or two until he explodes in loud orgasms. Maybe an hour later he starts firming up again.

He's giving excuses to avoid meeting any of his group of friends. The shirts don't fit his broader shoulders anymore and his trousers either don't fit at all, or show a big dick outline. When he does show up for a night out he finds himself distracted, like nothing he used to like about going out interests him anymore. He's introduced to a new girl. "He records some adult videos," his mate says with a wink. "I can see why," she responds, staring at your groin and licking her lips. She just looks so boring to him. It's getting more and more difficult for him to orgasm and he doesn't even see the point of having sex. He feels like a soda bottle, and masturbating or sex is just someone shaking it without opening it.

He's getting a pair of compression shorts to wear under his gym shorts, and a membership to the cheapest gym within reasonable distance. Something about looking great and others watching got stuck in his head. He's following the same routine as in the shoot, and really putting in an effort. To his surprise he can see some of the other men glancing his way. He likes it. If only they knew how hard he was while they were watching him, he's thinking. Perhaps they too were hard watching him. Suddenly his fantasy is pushing him to the edge and he is overcome with the desire to finish. He runs to the locker room and find the most private place he can, though nothing is truly private there, and starts working his big dick. It's not unlike the latest scene he recorded, but this time there are people within earshot hearing him moan. He's sure of it. His cum explosion is more under his control this time, so he doesn't look unreasonably untidy, at least not given his previous hard workout. Hardly any visible stains that can't be explained as sweat.

The few people in the locker room behaves as if they didn't hear anything, but he knows they would have to. He blushes as he rushes out and jogs back home, his mind again a jumble of emotions. Back home he strips naked, puts on the "Professional Porn Actor" sweatshirt, loads the Xander XeXy video from the business card URL, and coming again several times over the next few hours.

By the time I call him next time he's into a routine. Workout at the gym every day, a run home, and an hour or two of wanking to Xander videos. It takes longer and longer for him to get off. Physically he's changed further. Dropped perhaps another inch, massively improved muscle definition, and a whole lot of extra chest muscles. Most of all though his body fat has continued to climb down, making his face look much younger and leaner. His friends have mostly given up on him, or at least decided to come back later when he isn't so occupied with his latest obsession.

I call him in the middle of wanking, asking him if he wants a supporting role for the next Xander video. I can almost hear his precum drooling. I tell him that it's a bit of a bad boy on bad boy, so he needs to be outfitted properly. Nothing permanent of course, but it would fit the scene if he got some piercings. Doesn't have to be anything crazy, but perhaps a ring in each ear and studs through the nipples. I could of course just do it myself, but I want him to find a place, book a time, feel the procedure, and then anticipate the shoot for a few days.

He shows up on time, hard and horny. He hasn't been able to come for the past few days. He's wearing his new golden earrings, the porn actor sweatshirt, but compression shorts and blue jeans. Xander is already there, shaking his hand and greeting him by name. It always makes such a big impact when the guy you've been masturbating to for two weeks is just as stunning in real life, and knows your name. I quickly move along to our garage set, with a shutter door to the outside, to snap him out of his daze a bit. Partly to be professional, but party to not make him too comfortable with Xander yet. Just before the garage I have them strip and put on the dirt bike kit I've laid out for them. Thick polyester pants, slinky polyester shirts, boots, gloves, helmets, and goggles. All of it Fox Racing branded.

The glossy material of the shirt hangs off of his sizable chest and you can see a hint of the piercings through the material in certain poses, but his focus on the upper pec muscles makes the nipples point slightly out and down. I've told Xander to keep it cool initially, so there's no talking between them. For this shoot I've also gotten a boom boy and a cameraman, so I'm free to only direct.

First I have them mount the dirt bikes, some cheap 125cc ones we got that look aggressive with lots of open space, black mechanical parts, and the rest in striking green for one and blue for the other. Then they ride out a bit, turn around, and we start rolling. They ride into the garage, kill the motors, and dismount. Then they do a bit of teasing each other, while they remove more and more gear. Googles, gloves, helmet, shirt.

He's too into looking Xander's naked chest up and down to notice he is hairless and bronzed. They play a bit until Xander pushes him onto the flatbed with rugs and crap on it. I cut and before we continue with the sex part we need to set up the fixed cameras we cut between. With Xander on break and the rest of the crew rigging I walk up to him and tell him he was great. Then I push him every so slightly on the abdomen and a small amount of oil leaks out of his pores, covering him with a glistening sheen that makes the muscles pop in the light. It'll lock him into that greasy twink look we've been looking for.

526 notes · View notes

welzie-art · 8 months

Text

What's It Like To Be An Artist On Maui

What Its Like to be an Artist on Maui

Maui is a magical place where artist from all over the world come to visit and absorb the inspirational and creative energy. The Valley Isle offers everything a creative person needs to express theirselves through art. You will find every type of fine artist here on Maui from painters of all mediums, like myself, ceramics, glass, muralists, wood, traditional Hawaiian mediums, sculpture, photographers, reclaimed art, and so much more.

I want to dive into what its like to be an artist here on Maui and why so many artists choose Maui as their place of creativity and refuge. For myself, being an artist here on Maui is a relatively new experience. I spent all of my professional art career on Oahu, Hawaii, where I went to UH Manoa, started out in the art markets and developed my career with other amazing Oahu artists. In 2010 I had my first experience showing my work here on Maui and got a little glimpse into the Maui Art world. Read more about that experience here.

In June of 2019 we opened our first Maui art gallery at the Andaz Resort Wailea, The Welzie Art Gallery. This was a giant step for me as an artist and changed the course of my art career. After 3 months of being here on Maui, my wife and I fell in love with the slower pace and the bustling art scene. Running our gallery from Oahu just didn’t seem like the way to go. Once we found a warehouse space to create my studio, We were ready to make the move to an outer island.

Its been 4 years since making the transition to Maui and I have come to realize Maui is an amazing place to be an artist.

Here Are My 5 Reasons Why Being an Artist on Maui is Amazing

Reason 1

The pace of Maui is slow, which makes everything not stressful, but at the same time it is not so slow that time seems to stand still. For me, I need a little tempo to life and Maui Has the perfect balance. Its so convenient to be able to get to all the art stores, hardware stores, galleries and everything you need all within a short 20 min drive. With no traffic. The mellow pace of the island just reinforces a mellow and happy artist, which is exactly what I need to create my happy art.

Reason 2

There are so many galleries on the island with so many towns being little creative hot spots. This is great for any artist because it allows them to show their work in multiple areas close to home.

Hana, which is out on the east side of the island is very secluded and lush, where you will find the artists who need to get away from it all and create in their own little jungle world.

Paia is the small surf town on Maui’s north shore where you will find the surfing artist from all over the world who balance their creativity with their passion for riding waves in the world class surf surrounding the area. Yogis and hippies help contribute to the art scene in Paia, giving the area a very rootsy vibe.

Wailuku is getting brighter and brighter everyday as the small town nestled around Iao valley has created Small Town Big Art, an organized effort to seeing the community grow through art installations and outreach. STBA brings artist from around the islands and around the world to show their work and inspire the local community.

South Maui, where my studio and art gallery are, seems to be quickly becoming a major arts center on the island. In Kihei near my studio you will find artist, photographers, framers and creators starting to gather. There are now over 5 art galleries in South Maui, as well as a 3rd Friday event which shows artist works. The Four Seasons has artists showing their work daily in the lobby, The Andaz Wailea has created the Artist in Residence Program where I am the resident artist (I don’t live on site) It’s safe to say South Maui is definitely becoming another strong art hub in the Maui art community.

Makawow/Upcountry

In this upcountry town you will find a handfull of galleries with a country vibe. Nestled on the slopes of Haleakala, you can look out over the island while wearing a jacket and cowboy boots. You will find beautiful landscape painters such as Jordanne Gallery and others. It's such a different vibe up on the mountain and is a great example of the diversity in culture on Maui.

Lahaina,

The art Mecca of the Hawaiian islands, The gathering place for all Hawaii artists. With so many galleries and art culture in Lahaina, its hard to say there is a more artsy town than Lahaina. As Lahaina rebuilds I think and hope that all of us Maui artists know how important it will be to make sure the art scene of Lahaina town comes back and shows more local artists than ever before.

Reason 3

Like all the Hawaiian islands Maui is absolutely beautiful. If you’re an artist that gets a recharge from nature and getting away from it all, then Maui is like a constant reset button. Jumping into the clear, warm blue waters or looking out over the edge of a massive cliff on a hike, Maui can recharge your soul every single day. For myself as a creator, the ocean has always been a big source of inspiration. A good surf, snorkel or ocean swim would always get me in the right head space to create something happy and fun in the art studio.

Reason 4

Now this may be a controversial topic but one of the reasons why Maui is great to be an artist isa because so many people come to visit Maui every year and Maui is known for its art culture. As an artist you always want more people to see your artwork, and having new people come and visit every week allows for the artist to spend more time creating artwork and less time having to travel around showing their work. It is more like a “If you build it they will come” mentality. We as Maui artist get to make what we want to make then have the ability to show it to lots of new people right on our door step.

Reason 5

Maui has so many programs embedded into the Maui community to help facilitate the Arts. For example the Maui Arts and Cultural Center that shows artwork, theater and music. The Hui No'eau Visual Arts Center in Makawow which has art programs and gallery space. Maui Open Studios which organizes Maui artist to open their studios for art collectors to visit their creative space. Small Town Big Art, which I have mentioned before that brings artists of all kinds from all over the world to help bring creativity and inspiration to the Wailuku area. Maui truly is truly an art island paradise.

There are so many reason why Maui is an amazing place to be an artist. For myself, anywhere in the Hawaiian islands is an amazing place to be an artist. Hawaii breaths energy and mana and for someone who needs some creative energy, Hawaii is the place to thrive. Any artist in Hawaii with the ability to make a living here is truly fortunate. I am so fortunate to call Maui my home and to be a part of this Maui Art Community.

Aloha,

Welzie

#maui #maui artist

0 notes

venicepropainting · 2 years

Photo

Commercial painting essentially refers to the process of painting industrial facilities, such as parking garages, business warehouses, and power plants, to name a few. Commercial painting involves the application of industrial-grade colors, including urethane-based paints and epoxies. If you need to hire a commercial painter near me in South Surrey, you should keep in mind a few things. Industrial painting is ideal for an astounding variety of surfaces that may include cement, metal, wood, drywall, and many more.

Visit : https://g.page/r/CZUqYkYlo1MpEAE

#painter venice #venice painter #Painters near me in South Surrey #Best painter in South Surrey #Commercial painters in surrey #Exterior painters in surrey #Interior painters in Surrey

0 notes

rgcseo · 4 years

Link

Over time the surfaces and paint on buildings can become weathered and worn down. All Districts Coating are highly skilled in both restoring surfaces to their optimum state and preventing surfaces from succumbing to damage.

#industrial painting services #industrial painting #warehouse painting services #industrial painting contractors near me #graffiti removal company #graffiti removal sydney #strata painting sydney #strata painting services #strata painting #strata painters sydney #commercial painting contractors sydney #commercial painting cost #commercial painting contractors #commercial painting company #commercial building painting contractors #apartment painting #apartment painting contractors

0 notes

maybl00d · 4 years

Note

The Office of the Friendsim hang would be hilarious and I love the idea of MSPA being the receptionist for this crazy company with all the trolls. Just living on day at a time. They gotta be the Pap to Mallek’s Jim. Maybe he’s the tech support rather than a salesman and he uses any excuse to hang out with MSPA, maybe even putting some viruses on the other’s computer as an excuse to chat.

I LOVE UR HEADCANNONS LETS FUCKING GOOOO!!!

Ok here we go these are my office au headcannons!-

Mspa reader: receptionist for the Outglut paper company, being hit on by both Mallek and Zebruh

Ardata: one of the bosses of the company, works with Zebruh, goes out for coffee’s with MSPA reader.

Diemen: salesman for the company, keeps tomato and mustard packets at his desk.

Cirava: in charge of Outgluts paper comercial sound designs, if not doing that their more likely to be taking a nap under MSPA readers desk.

Bronya: accountant, hit on by many of her coworkers.

Skylla: warehouse manager that delivers the paper, sometimes takes Ladyy to work

Tagora: salesman and part of the local jury on occasion, self care days are usually spent on more than vacation days. (Apart of the High society.)

Vikare: delivery man that’s trying to make it into the airforce.

Polypa: She’s the office mystery. Never in one place and always somewhere near you.

Zebruh: thanks to @heuristicallyinclined for the wonderful idea of Zebruh being the company owners son.

Elwurd: accountant that’s into some shady shit.

Kuprum and Folykl: they’re the friendsim version of Ryan and Kelly except they actually love each other.

Remele: painter and salesman. Frequently promotes her webcomic on the message boards.

Konyyl: warehouse worker, many think she’s having a fling with Skylla. ask her and she’ll rip your throat out.

Chixie: secretary to Zebruh, hates her job but vents to MSPA reader to make up for it.

Tyzias: lawyer in training. For now she’s in charge of the accounting department.

Chahut: one of zebruh’s higher ups, steals paper and makes scrapbooks at MSPA readers desk.

Azdaja: am overconfident salesman. Part of me believes he’s the friendsim Dwight we all needed.

Zebede: likes to suck up to cirava while their working, salesman If needed.

Tegiri: warehouse worker that brings katana’s to work. He’s got a little bit of Gabe energy. Has a crush on Polypa.

Lynera: warehouse worker that doesn’t like getting her hands dirty. Likes to talk to Bronya a lot.

Mallek: the IT guy, purposefully puts viruses on MSPA readers computer so they can talk more (thanks anon!!)

Galekh: higher up and works with Zebruh, tends to belittle and also flirt??? With Tagora.

Boldir: delivery driver with Fozzer, she drags mspar for the drive sometimes.

Stelsa: Tyzias’ girlfriend and is a member of the high society club. (They meet in the break room and be classy.)

Marsti: janitor with vast knowledge of most of the companies profits, MSPA is trying to get them a job here.

Charun: the lazy vendor machine technician that gives free snacks to mspar and remele

Fozzer: Boldir’s second in command when delivering paper. They do be pale for each other doe.

Marvus: Zebruh’s higher-up and friends with chixie.

Daraya: a temp trying to find her way around the office, chills with mspar most of the time.

Nikhee: fitness coach and one of the companies spokesperson, how paper and fitness fit so well together is beyond me. Trains with Stelsa.

Lanque: a temp that’s lowkey black flirting with mspar. (Apart of the high society.)

All the kids would be the one Halloween episode from the office where they go to the warehouse, if you haven’t seen it I really recommend it, it’s funny as fuck.

The high society is a bunch of coworkers that just buy a lot of fancy things and eat a fancy lunch and sip tea and talk about fancy shit. Members are: Stelsa, Tagora and Lanque.)

In my opinion I see this au as a troll blended society, so all those quadrant things exist and what not. Mspa reader is the only human working here.

104 notes · View notes

delirious-and-slightly-murderous · 3 years

Note

For the WIP ask game: please tell us something about Procrastinating Painter and exasperated but horny manager?

Hi Anon!😊 So glad you asked about this one.

So this is, at its core, a character study.

A little tidbit of information about me: I am a master procrastinator. And not only when it comes to writing but in all aspects of my life too. I am lazy. If I can do it later, I will do it later. And I'll keep pushing it back as much as I can until I can't anymore. Thanks to this I've become a master at finishing projects with very little time and a deadline hanging like a sword of Damocles over my head. I work best under pressure. That's why I sometimes lose interest in my fics so easily. If I don't have a deadline it's very hard for me to get stuff done.

Soooooo, all this to say that one day, while I was despairing over my WIPs I started thinking about the different ways an artist or creator can deal with procrastination. And then, because every idea I get now mostly concerns or can be applied to Berlermo, I said to myself: But what if Andrés was a master procrastinator like me?

And BAM!

This thing was born. (Also I find it kinda ironic and hilarious that a character study in procrastination ended up as a WIP, don't you agree?).

So the basic idea is that Andrés is a moderately known and successful painter. He's not as successful as he could be because he's very particular and picky with his work and who he works for. So he only paints when he wants to and what he wants to. Which would be fine except that he is a procrastinator so his work is scarce.

Enter Martín, who is Andrés' best friend/agent and kinda friend with benefits. He is the one in charge of making sure Andrés gets stuff done even if the man in question does not want to. This means that Martín lives in a constant state of awe at Andrés' genius and talent, and also exasperation because of his laziness and inability to do what he's told. Also he is very much in love with Andrés and hates himself because of it.

So the fic in itself would cover the span of a month while Martín tries to get Andrés to work on an important commision for a famous gallery. From him we would see his struggle with perceived unrequited feelings for a man he feels he cannot fully come to understand. Andrés would procrastinate and we would see all his process and struggle with it. Until a couple days before the exhibition when Martín is about to kill Andrés, his genius strikes and he goes and produces a masterpiece (a masterpiece that may or may not be inspired by Martín).

So mostly it would focus on the art, the feels, the procrastination, and then the mad rush to get things done in time. (And I'd like to think I'd write it with a very oniric feel to it. Oh and also smut, so very like soulful and poetic smut. But well I don't think that's gonna happen.)

(Oh and also a happy ending where they end up confessing their feelings because I'm weak like that😁.)

So here have a snippet:

Martín started pacing and swore as he narrowly avoided walking into a bucket of bright red paint.

The room was positively tiny and he still couldn't understand why Andrés insisted on spending all his time in it like some kind of recluse. The monastery was big enough to accommodate docens of people at one time but Andrés was happy to cram himself in the tiniest, most uncomfortable room he could find.

He wondered how Andrés could live like that. The room was cramped, cluttered with books, canvases, sculptures and various bits of artistic trash. It looked like a museum's warehouse, if museums threw invaluable works in a warehouse without thought or care to what became of them. As he walked he deftly avoided discarded pieces of paper, empty paint tubes and old brushes. It was dirty, paint and dust covered every surface. The space not taken up by art supplies was used by a mattress on the ground shoved unceremoniously into a corner, a small coffee table and an enormous oak work table that seemed to be the centerpiece of the place.

Amongst all this chaos there stood Andrés, serene and unperturbed, unaware of his surroundings. With a brush on each hand and one clenched between his teeth. Before him a half painted canvas stretched like a vision of doom. The colors bleak and depressing. A mirage of untold horrors that sucked the life out of the area around it. The air seeming to grow heavier, dense and charged, stilted and dead.

Martín could feel it in his bones, the emotions Andrés put into his work always expanding and resonating within him, turning him into a vessel for what Andrés couldn't say.

He was choking on an invisible weight and fought against it to unfurl his tongue from the dry cavern of his mouth and produce a sound. He knew the other man wasn't happy and that his intervention would only make things worse. But he had to shatter the looming tension before it swallowed him whole.

"Why don't you find another place. Maybe an apartment closer to the city."

Andrés didn't stop in his work but his shoulders tensed imperceptibly and the fingers of his left hand started drumming against the brush he wasn't currently using. He shook his head softly, his motions fluid and liquid. A delicate movement of silk floating in water.

"I'm not moving in with you Martín."

Martín closed his eyes, the bright hot pang in his heart a familiar caress at this point. He was like an addict, his feelings for Andrés a raging force that ravages his body and leaves him empty and aching. And still he willingly comes back for more, each time climbing higher with the knowledge that when he hits the ground it'll be more violent than before, the pieces impossible to pick up.

"That's not what I'm asking, you know it's not."

Andrés dipped his brush in a mug near his hand, washing out the dark paint, flicking the brush and creating a splatter of black bottomless dots, giving birth to a galaxy in the space that separates them.

"Don't ask things for which you know you won't like the answer."

Andrés' strokes become forceful then, the brush colliding against the canvas in an uncontrolled manner. The anger and frustration behind the movement captures Martín. He feels like a chick standing at the precipice. He can jump and take flight, taste the freedom and exhilaration of the wind rushing through his wings. Closing his eyes and diving not knowing if he's ready to fly the possibility of the deadly agonising crash a dark shadow at his back.

He was saved from having to make the choice by Andrés humming lowly in his throat.

"I love you Martín, but I'm not going to give up my life for you."

That familiar caress is back and the little chick is safely back in it's nest. The precipice dissolving and the unforgivable ground surging up to meet him, ripping him away in a manner more painful than any death. He shrugs, hunching in on himself, knowing the matter is closed and forgotten.

"Pass me my coffee." He demands, plastering a fake plastic smile on his face. While Andrés chooses to ignore the burning heat of things left unsaid that slowly melt the plastic away. Leaving behind a partially uncovered picture of a grotesque truth.

"I'm painting." Came the absent minded reply, the willful ignorance of man with a staggering lucidity of all the consequences of his actions.

Martín got up stretching legs that felt numb, forced to carry the weight of an unfathomable burden. He slowly walked towards Andrés, his steps the slow and lifeless cadence of the condemned, prolonging the inevitable in their approach to the gallows.

He took his mug and took a long and deep sip of the liquid inside. He became aware of his mistake when Andrés turned to him with a steaming mug in his hand and a confused frown wrinkling his brow.

Martín immediately opened his mouth, the dark paint water running down his chin like vomit, maring his shirt and staining skin and teeth. In the sickly pale light of the naked bulb, with the shadows under his eyes and the lingering hurt in his being, it made him look like a corpse throwing up thick and rotten blood.

Andrés laughed, the sound had a hysterically joyful quality to it, a discordant note in the gloominess of the room. It immediately invaded them, running through every crevice, every nook and cranny, injecting light and giving back the life that had been sucked out by the oppressing darkness.

The room changed completely, becoming bright and warm without suffering any real physical changes. It was infectious, contaging Martín and changing him from the inside out without his notice.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a comfortable silence. And the next time Martín stopped for a visit the room felt warm and homely, cosy and welcoming. He also found that the mugs had marker scribbles on them. One read 'Martín' the other 'Paint Water'.

It put a small smile on his face.

Well Anon, it's really shitty right now and needs a lot of polishing and editing, but I hope you enjoy this and that it doesn't disappoint.☺

#berlermo #I actually like this one a lot too #It's mostly me projecting my feelings onto Andrés and Martín #my feelings and insecurities #but well #i hope one day I manage to do it #and that it comes out good #but I'm not great with character studies #so 🤷‍♀️#this might die a languid death in my docs #martin berrote #andres de fonollosa #la casa de papel #alternate universe #lcdp #procrastination #fanfic #ask game #ask

6 notes · View notes

aonepaintinglasvegas · 3 years

Link

Commercial Painting Service & Commercial Painting Contractor Service and Cost in Las Vegas NV | Aone Painting Las Vegas More information is at: https://bestpaintingcontractorslasvegasnv.com/commercial-painting-service-near-me/

Looking for Commercial painting contractors near Las Vegas NV? Call Aone Painting Las Vegas. We offer Interior Painting, Exterior Painting, Commercial Painting. Aone Painting Las Vegas is fully insured and licensed. We are contractors serving the residential, commercial, industrial and institutional sectors. Best painting contractor in Las Vegas NV. Cost? Free estimates. Call today or send us a message only for quick service.

REQUEST FREE ESTIMATES!

Commercial Paint Company When you choose Aone Painting Las Vegas you are choosing a painter who delivers results and strives to exceed your expectations every time. Professional painters show up on time and prepared to complete the job. We keep it clean, maintain anonymity and communicate through preferred methods of contact. Commercial Services. site surveys, project meetings, design consultation, formal bid presentation, permit procurement, all required insurances.

Commercial Markets. retail, restaurant, leasing, contractor, school, manufacturing, industrial, warehouse.

Impressive Commercial Painting Service for Your Office Space The quality of your business is somehow enhanced by the appearance of your commercial building. Appearance matters. It has been generally understood that refinishing your commercial space will enhance its curb appeal. It’ll impress guests by giving them a positive lasting impression of your premises. It can also drive foot traffic. Make your center for commerce an inviting place today by relying on the commercial painting services of Aone Painting Las Vegas in Las Vegas NV. Commercial Painting Service We deliver impeccable painting service at reasonable prices. We handle all types and scope of painting projects, whether big or small. The work is performed by highly-trained and seasoned painters. We have a profound understanding of the painting process and we do the work thoroughly. We know how to successfully complete a painting project and we keep it within your budget. We have extensive experience in offering commercial painting; that’s why we finish the job fast and easy with beautiful results. We have rendered our services to industrial and commercial spaces such as warehouses, offices, gyms, transportation facilities, entertainment venues, storage facilities, high-rise buildings, and much more. We exceed the quality you expected and we complete it in the set time frame. Methods and tools Surface preparation is crucial in achieving success in the painting process. It also contributes to the durability of the paint. Our expert painters are adept at this. The surface is first examined and then appropriate methods will be applied including power washing, steam cleaning, sandblasting, abrasion, and chemical treatments. They will clean up after themselves when they’re done. You can rest assured that the site is kept clean and organized. We have the utmost respect for our valued clients and we treat your property as if it is our own. We also use a wide selection of professional-grade paints which are carefully applied.

Efficient Las Vegas Commercial Painting Services If someone recommends a painting service to you, know doubt they were happy with the services they received. When the services of The Aone Painting Las Vegas are recommended to you, we hope that you will consider our reputation, as we have worked hard and diligently to solidify our reputation as the most efficient commercial painters in Las Vegas. We offer the most affordable and efficient painting services in the city, which is often why so many continue to recommend our services. With our high standard of quality services, you get your money’s worth and more at Aone Painting Las Vegas.

BEST COMMERCIAL PAINTING SERVICE & COMMERCIAL PAINTING CONTRACTOR IN LAS VEGAS NV AONE PAINTING LAS VEGAS REQUEST FREE INFORMATION NOW.

CONTACT DETAILS Aone Painting Las Vegas Best Painter Painting Services in Las Vegas, NV CALL: (702) 800-8353 Located in Las Vegas, Nevada Open Monday to Sunday 7 am -11 pm Website: https://bestpaintingcontractorslasvegasnv.com/

SERVICE AREA Cities: Las Vegas NV 89109, North Las Vegas, Summerlin, Henderson, Spring Valley, Winchester, Sunrise Manor, Paradise, Pahrump, Boulder City, NEVADA. Las Vegas neighborhoods: Near Aliante, Anthem/Anthem Country Club, Chinatown, Downtown Las Vegas, Green Valley, Lake Las Vegas, Las Vegas Country Club, MacDonald Highlands, Mountain’s Edge, Paradise Palms, Queensridge & One Queensridge Place, Seven Hills, Southern Highlands, Summerlin, Summerlin South, The Lakes, The Ridges, West Las Vegas. Nellis AFB, Indian Springs, Blue Diamond, Jean Service Area Zip Codes: Near 88901, 88905, 89101, 89102, 89104, 89106, 89107, 89108, 89109, 89110, 89116, 89117, 89124, 89125, 89126, 89127, 89128, 89129, 89130, 89131, 89133, 89134, 89136, 89137, 89138, 89143, 89144, 89145, 89146, 89147, 89149, 89151, 89152, 89153, 89154, 89155, 89157, 89158, 89161, 89162, 89163, 89164, 89166, 89185.

OUR SISTER COMPANIES IN LAS VEGAS

MGM HOUSEHOLD SERVICES (702) 530-7597 http://www.mgmhouseholdservices.com/

SERVICE-VEGAS (702) 514-3052 http://www.service-vegas.com/

MCCARRAN HANDYMAN SERVICES (702) 570-4279 http://www.handymanlasvegasnv.com/

VEGAS HANDYMAN SERVICES (702) 583-2081 http://lasvegashandyman.org/

LAS VEGAS ROOFING COMPANY (702) 560-6579 http://roofinglasvegas.org/

LAS VEGAS HAULING JUNK & MOVING (702) 570-4765 http://junkremovallasvegas.org/

MGM JUNK REMOVAL (702) 329-9729 http://www.mgmjunkremoval.com/

CSN CLEANING LAS VEGAS (702) 551-2023 http://www.cleaningserviceslasvegasnv.com/

LAS VEGAS CHEAP JUNK REMOVAL (702) 570-4765 http://junkremovalserviceinlasvegas.com/

PRICE MOVING HAULING LAS VEGAS (702) 560-2686 http://moving-vegas.com

LAS VEGAS JANITORIAL SERVICES (702) 329-1040 http://janitorialserviceslasvegas.org/

A1 CONCRETE MASONRY OF LAS VEGAS (702) 879-4631 http://concretemasonrycontractorslasvegasnv.com

AONE HAULING & BOBCAT SERVICE LAS VEGAS (702) 670-4075 http://lasvegasbobcatservice.com

CONCRETE CONTRACTORS OF LAS VEGAS (702) 570-4766 http://concretecontractorsoflasvegas.com

LAS VEGAS BEST REMODELING & HANDYMAN SERVICES (702) 570-4279 http://remodelingcontractorslasvegasnv.com

LAS VEGAS HOUSEHOLD SERVICES (702) 843-0512 http://lasvegashouseholdservices.com/

AONE CLEANING LAS VEGAS (702) 843-0518 http://vegashousekeepingservice.com

MGM CLEANING LAS VEGAS (702) 843-0589 http://bestcleaningcompanyvegas.com

PRICE CLEANING SERVICES LAS VEGAS (702) 680-2590 http://maidservicevegas.com

LAS VEGAS PLUMBING COMPANY (702) 570-4662 http://bestplumbervegas.com

PLUMBING CONTRACTORS OF LAS VEGAS (702) 824-9466 http://plumbingcontractorsoflasvegas.com

1 note · View note

scopepainting · 5 months

Text

SA painters-Residential painters in SA-Bathroom painter in Mawson Lakes, SA

Transform Your Home with the Best Roof Painters in South Australia

Is your roof showing signs of wear and tear? Does it lack the luster it once had, diminishing your home's curb appeal? The solution is simpler than you might think –professional roof painting! In South Australia, the roof painters at SCOPE PAINTING are here to transform your roof and protect your investment. Discover why our team is the top choice for roof painting in South Australia.

Roof painting is not just about aesthetics; it's a smart investment that can extend the life of your roof and add value to your home.A fresh coat of paint can make your roof look brand new, instantly boosting your home's curb appeal. Whether you have a tiled or metal roof, our experts have the experience to bring out its naturalbeauty.

South Australia's weather can be unpredictable, with scorching heat, heavy rains, and strong winds. Quality roof paint acts as a protective shield, safeguarding your roof from the elements and preventing damage.Roof painting is a cost-effective way to extend the life of your roof. It can help prevent issues like rust, corrosion,and moss growth, ensuring your roof lasts for years to come.

At our, we take pride in being the go-to roof painters in South Australia.Our team comprises skilled professionals with years of experience in roof painting. We know the unique challenges South Australian roofs face and how to overcome them.We use top-notch materials and paints, ensuring a long-lasting finish that can withstand the harshest weather conditions.We believe in perfection. Our experts pay meticulous attention to every detail, from surface preparation to the final brushstroke,guaranteeing a flawless result.

Quality shouldn't come at a premium. We offer competitive rates that make professional roof painting accessible to every homeowner in South Australia.Not sure if your roof needs painting? We provide free consultations and assessments, so you'll have all the information you need to make an informed decision.

We are dedicated to delivering 100% customer satisfaction. Our mission is to make your roof painting experience stress-free and enjoyable. From the initial consultation to the final inspection, we are with you every step of the way.

1 note · View note

crusherthedoctor · 4 years

Text

It goes without saying: the first level always matters. If it doesn’t leave a good impression, it would hardly motivate you to give the rest of the journey a chance, would it? Being in fanfic form aside, Beyond the Stars is no exception, and because of this, Gleaming Meadows was actually one of the longest zones to work out. Viridonia is meant to stand out from previous Sonic settings after all, and kicking things off with a poor man’s Green Hill wouldn’t cut it.

Since the first level in a Sonic game usually tends to be either a hilly area (Green Hill, Emerald Hill, Seaside Hill) or an urban area (City Escape, Westopolis, Windmill Isle to an extent), I decided a good way to set this zone apart would be to... combine the two! This was inspired very much by Neo Green Hill from Sonic Advance, since although that zone wasn’t a city, it did add some minor urban elements the further it went on, most notably the bridge at the end where you fight Eggman. So as tribute to a forever underrated installment, Gleaming Meadows does that too, but in a different way.

Creating Zone 1: Gleaming Meadows

1-1: Blossom Fields

What’s a good way to make your first level stand out from all the Green Hills? Give it more than green, obviously. While it’s important that the entire adventure is full of interesting locations, I really wanted the first level to sound as gorgeous as possible in order to leave a strong first impression for this new journey, so what better inspiration than tulip fields, particularly those of the Netherlands?

The added use of yellows, oranges, reds and pinks already help set it apart, but there’s also the fact that although there are some lakes and rivers here and there, it’s not particularly coastal.

This aesthetic not only serves to get things off to a good start, but it also sums up the running theme with Beyond the Stars in general. Namely, that although plenty of the basic level tropes will be familiar to us all, many of them will be handled in rather different ways, thus proving that as long as you can think outside the box, there’s plenty of life in them yet. Some examples are more extreme than others, but other times, even a simple change of colour, weather, or time of day can make all the difference.

I mentioned in Chapter 1 proper that the cliffs in Blossom Fields have unique markings that convey a vague, lore-hinting narrative. I couldn’t find a better image to explain how this would look, so I’ll have to resort to this shot from Paper Mario:

See the cliff behind them, with its starry patterns on the soil? That’s basically the gist, but with a more complex pattern.

Also mentioned was the addition of a tunnel near the end of the stage, which is one example of the Neo Green Hill-esque hillside with minor urban elements that I intended.

Don’t assume the inside is drab however. On the contrary, it comes with abstract graffiti in a style reminiscent of the Colinton Tunnel in Edinburgh:

Very Jet Set Radio, eh? In addition to simply being more interesting this way, I figured it fit Sonic perfectly.

But you might question what a tunnel inspired by Edinburgh is doing in a level inspired by the Netherlands. Well, this is another running gag with Viridonia. While not always the case, a lot of times there’ll be combined aspects of real world inspiration, as opposed to Unleashed and its clear cut Not-Greece, Not-New York, etc. This is not just me throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, there is in fact a purpose to it, as it’s one of the more subtle ways of showing how peculiar Viridonia can be compared to other places in Sonic history - partly due to the Ethereal Zone - with only the Little Planet truly competing with the island in that field.

And y’know, it gives it that extra bit of identity and variety, eh?

Now, with music choices to explain what sort of musical atmosphere I’d have in mind for each level, I’m gonna have to use basic links from now on, since I rediscovered the hard way that Tumblr only allows up to five or so direct posts. It’s also worth noting that if this were a real game, it would do what SA1 (and, uh, ‘06) did before it, with each level having at least two different bits of music for the appropriate sections to add even more flair. I’ll still be listing two examples each for extra comparison’s sake, so with that said...

First Section (the fields): Opening Demo (Sonic Mega Collection) Ending B (Sonic Advance 3)

Second Section (the tunnel): Topical Tropical (Sonic: Before the Sequel) Shooting Ristar

1-2: Swanky Suburbs

Continuing the Netherland theme going on, the local town has a touch of Giethoorn to it, with its calming rivers and little pathways. Though unlike Giethoorn, there would be some cars and short roads sprinkled about.

Again, really wanted to convey that feeling of low-key beauty and coziness, and provide more justification for why Sonic and Co would come here for a vacation. But that’s not all: when it comes to the houses and other buildings, the red and white colour scheme is more based on those of Portugal:

And of course, you have the local parks as well. You can even interact with the slides and swings if you want, because you’re never too old to make the kids wait their turn.

First Section (calm): Neo Green Hill Classic The Amazon (DuckTales Remastered)

Second Section (when Badniks start wrecking things up): Wave Ocean ~The Inlet~ (Sonic ‘06) Andy’s Neighborhood (Toy Story 2)

1-3: Yellow Hills

As we go on, we leave the Netherland influence behind, and with the countryside in sight, the clue is in the name. Lots of yellow to be had indeed.

And inbetween all these fields, we have some villages, of which the rural vibe suits the place just fine.

Then as we go into farmyard territory, the yellow actually starts taking a back seat in favor of red, because I guess even I’m not immune to the subverting expectations fever. Hopefully I’ve done it in a way that isn’t asinine though.

The barnyards would be the stereotypical red and white, since it works well enough with the autumn colours, and can still pop out despite there being so much red surrounding them.

And yes, there are many farm animals hanging around here.

Yes, that includes horses.

No, they’re not Trudy’s family.

First Section (yellow): Tornado Alley (Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex) Mount Lineland (Super Paper Mario)

Second Section (red): Green Hill ‘12 (Tee Lopes) Menu (Mario Tennis)

1-4: Rusty Mill

A wooden mill doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination, so it would look pretty much exactly as you’d expect, albeit a tad more old and worn.

The same goes for inside, really. Since the interior of mills are tricky to find interesting images of when elaborating on your quirky Sonic the Hedgehog zone, I’ll be using another game for comparison instead, specifically Donkey Kong Country 3:

Except multiply the cobwebs by five.

It’s decayed, and a bit grim, but not enough to the point where it would feel like it’s near the endgame. Yet another thing I go in hard on in this story: escalation. In order for later zones and climactic moments to be more striking and impactful, you gotta start off by taking it easy. There’s still action to be had, and there’s still mysterious and/or ominous touches here and there, but it’s for the purpose of organically building things up, so that when things do escalate, you actually feel it when shit starts going down. Pacing, boys and girls! Learn it!

Then again, as with Angel Island in S3&K, this place gets set on fire halfway through, so maybe I need to remember my own lessons. But on the other hand, also like S3&K, it still pales in comparison to what happens later, so...

Lastly for today, when you’re fighting the fearsome Paindozer, the section of the mill that you confront it in suspiciously takes a form more akin to a old fashioned warehouse. Like... IKEA, I guess. But on fire.

So congratulations, you got through IKEA Zone. Looks like Eggman should have stuck with B&Q Zone instead.

First Section (calm): Pogo Painter (Crash Bash) The Walk of Life (Rayman 2)

Second Section (on fire): Vs. Rotatatron & Refreshinator (Sonic Colours) Set Point - Match Point (Mario Tennis)

#Creating Viridonia #Sonic the Hedgehog #Fanfiction

11 notes · View notes

sandblastingkenwick · 3 years

Text

What are the Steps to find the best Painting & Sandblasting Company?

Renovating or painting real estate properties demands care, time, and finance. Though there are various industrial painting companies across the area offering one-stop painting solutions, if you are planning to paint your warehouse or factory, choose the best painting company that stands out from the crowd with its unique qualities.

There are a couple of things that you should check before signing up with the painters. Here, we have shortlisted 5 quick steps to find the best service providers—

Popular for their unique style

When it comes to choosing the right painting service providers, you should be considerate about the unique style that the painters have. The service providers offering blasting and painting services must have the reputation for the out-of-the-box wall styling with eco-friendly colors they do all the time for their clients and ensuring them with a 100% guaranteed job.

Versatile Services

Nowadays, smart painters offer a multitude of services and they are not restricted to the services of painting the walls only. Popular painting and sandblasting company Kenwick have appeared online via and promote their businesses and with multiple services. Choose a company that offers various services under one roof such as customizing the painting, renovations to drywall repair, sandblasting services for smoothing the rough surfaces or metals and concretes before painting by using advanced technology and trained manpower.

Have a face-to-face interview with your chosen painters

Select the painting and sandblasting companies online by typing “industrial painting and sandblasting near me” in Google and schedule an interview with them.

Check their previous work

Make sure that you have chosen the finest professionals only after checking some of their previous works. Though from the portfolio you can have an idea of the passion they have for their job, visiting a few sites physically where the company has worked can be a great experience for you.

These are a few steps to to find the best Painting & Sandblasting Company.

Source: https://sandblastingcompany.blogspot.com/2021/06/what-are-steps-to-find-best-painting.html

1 note · View note

heartslogos · 3 years

Text

the declassified texts of the inquisition’s elite [149]

(504): Honestly, if you don't have a lawsuit pending against you by this time tomorrow, I'll be impressed. - (636): Can you explain the Transformers set up for battle in my living room? -

“Give Max some credit,” Evelyn says as she arranges documents on her desk, “Almost all of our family hates him, he’s a social outcast in all the circles my family moves in, and for the most part they do everything they can to slander his name so that he’s not affiliated with them anymore. And yet? If you talk to most people in upper society in those yacht clubs and gold resorts he’s got a pretty damn good reputation. I know he doesn’t look it — no. Yes. He does look it. He’s every bit as adept at navigating social circles and the various pitfalls of society as he looks. Polos and khaki pants and all.”

“The fact that your cousin can get away with gross slander and libel on live television without getting any lawsuits filed against him and you, the Inquisitor, can’t even sneeze without the media throwing a fit and someone threatening to sue, is some kind of strange and perplexing conundrum.” Leliana turns to Vivienne. “Your thoughts?”

“It’s certainly a fascinating turn of events,” Vivienne replies. “He has a certain charm to him, you have to admit. It’s like he was born to work the media circuits. Josephine, darling, that boy could possibly give you a run for your money given some more training and certifications.”

“Glad to know that I have a replacement lined up in a worst case scenario,” Josephine says. “It does take some of the pressure off of me.”

“He couldn’t,” Evelyn says. “Josephine, please don’t leave and put me in my cousin’s hands. He’s good. He’s not that good. Mostly his charm and persuasion applies to himself. He’s got average chances on getting his way if you involve other people into the mix. That said, should I be asking what he did now that we might be getting a lawsuit any second?”

“Ah. He called out Gaspard on national television,” Leliana says. “I’m sure that several people share his opinions. But saying it on national television? This close to the national assembly dates when Gaspard’s doing the most campaigning and lobbying to get his people into Orlais’ parliament? It’s just asking for Gaspard’s people to either respond in kind or take it up to court.”

“As much as Gaspard will want to,” Vivienne interjects, “And he will want to, the man does not suffer blows to his pride quietly not even for the sake of progress. But he has surrounded himself with several people who will know how to best silence him and direct his outrage in quieter methods. The question becomes can we trap him in those methods and force them into the light to further our efforts, or shall we sit back and see how it unfolds? I do believe that Maxwell will be fine. It’s a question of whether this will come around to be a direct attack on the Inquisition in other circuitous ways.”

“We’ll be on the look out for both,” Josephine says. “I have a feeling that Maxwell will be fine. He always is when it comes to things like this. And there’s nothing Gaspard’s people can say about Maxwell that Maxwell himself hasn’t directly acknowledged or addressed before. He doesn’t keep dirty secrets.”

“It’s one of the hardest things to work with about him,” Leilana sighs. “Good on him for continuing to be appropriately wary of me, but I’m usually bluffing when I give hints that I have something on him. He’s already told the world everything one could possibly blackmail him with. And that’s one strategy to becoming hard to get. It’s definitely not one I’d endorse, but it works.” -

“Where did you get all of the action figures from?” Cullen asks as Maxwell hands him another plastic container filled with toys.

“Don’t worry about it,” Maxwell replies. “So how did you answer Josephine when she asked about the set up?”

“I told her the truth,” Cullen replies, moving aside for Max to come in. “I’m collecting toys for charity. Leliana got bored seeing them stacked up to the side of the hallway and decided to make a battleground with them.” Cullen’s mouth pulls up into a small grin. “Now they’re both getting into it. You’ve arrived with reinforcements.”

“Is there a story to this battle, or is it just a battle?” Max asks. Then laughs. “Who am I kidding? It’s Josephine and Leliana, of course there’s a story. How many people are involved in this, knowing the two of them?”

“Bull’s helping Josephine with tactics,” Cullen says as he sets the plastic container down next to the several empty bins lining the hallway. He pulls out his phone to text his house mates that their new soldiers have arrived. “Herah’s also helping with that. Leliana’s got plenty of tactical experience, but she’s also tapped Sera for help. She’s also guilt tripping Blackwall into giving her advice for her side.”

“Wow,” Max says. “And who’s side are you on?”

“I’m neutral. It would be most unfair of me to pitch in either way,” Cullen replies. “As long as the toys aren’t damaged I’m fine with this. At least they’re being played with. Though I do hope they get this whole thing concluded before it’s time for us to load up the trucks with the donations. I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have aid I’d handle the food or clothing donations instead of the toy ones.”

“To be fair, you probably didn’t expect this would happen when you said you’d help hold all of the action figures and dolls,” Max says. “Shame we couldn’t use one of our warehouses to store all of the stuff instead of having to sub-categorize them and dole them out to people willing to volunteer their personal living quarters.”

“Right, but I’d rather not have these goods stored near weapons or any of our other more professional equipment and risk them getting confused by accident,” Cullen says. “Especially for the food stores. It’s just easier to keep track of them like this, strangely enough. How are things at yours? You and Evelyn volunteered your place for the eye glasses collections right?”

“Yeah. Because we didn’t think we’d get so many. We’ve got eye glasses everywhere now. Evelyn’s put painters tape on her glasses just so she won’t get confused and lose hers. It’s shocking. I honestly didn’t think there were that many people with eye glasses working here. I’m tempted to ask if people are just buying glasses or readers from drug stores and tossing them at us just because.”

“That’s nice of them. Some of the toys we’ve gotten are brand new also,” Cullen says. “Come on, the kitchen is the only place not taken over by Leliana and Josephine’s battlegrounds. We decided having small plastic removable parts hidden near our food was too risky.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

3 notes · View notes

danetobelieve · 4 years

Text

It’s The End Of The World || Orion, Ricky, Winston. ft Lydia

TIMING: the night of 12/06/2020 (12th June) LOCATION: Abandoned Warehouse Rave on the docks PARTIES: @3starsquinn, @ricky-corderbro, @danetobelieve, @inspirationdivine SUMMARY: Rio, Winston and Ricky attend an end of the world rave. Ricky is jet lagged. Winston is stressed and makes bad decisions and Orion throws up. Lydia makes a new friend.

Winston wasn’t really feeling like going partying. Actually, going raving at the potential end of the world was apparently what everyone else was doing and when Todd had excitedly explained that they were going to be invited to a rave that he was playing at, well Winston hadn’t really been keen to go. But after a few drinks and some arm twisting, Winston had been convinced to go along with their other friends. They’d gotten dressed and were stepping out of the taxi that had dropped them off by the warehouse near the docks and Winston was nervous. They’d pre-gamed a bit before and they were tipsy, but that didn’t change the fact that they had seen some shit with Rio. They knew what needed to be done to resolve this and they weren’t going to be involved. They couldn’t change what might happened and honestly Winston had never felt more helpless. “Todd told us to just say we were here as his guests and show him our tickets and he’d let us in,” Winston adjusted their glasses a little, “all ready?”

Orion’s anxiety had been through the roof. He wasn’t sure if he had found the time to mention this to either of his roommate’s, but he hated parties. He had been to a few now. All times dragged against his will by Athena to some frat house where he proceeded to find the farthest bathroom from the noise and hide out. He had gotten so little sleep the last few weeks studying everything about this demon language that he wasn’t even sure he could stay conscious at this party. He had already dozed off in the car multiple times on the way here. It definitely didn’t help that Rio barely knew this Todd character that Winston and Ricky were friends with. He just hoped that the two of them weren’t like Athena was at parties. She usually stuck around for about ten minutes before ditching Rio. He wasn’t sure he was equipped to handle that here. “I’m sure this goes without saying, but I am definitely not.” Rio sighed, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. “I think I need… a drink. Or several.” Rio found himself saying, the exhaustion and stress getting to him. Rio had never been drunk before, he had never even had more than a couple of sips of alcohol. This was going to be a long night.

One very early and very long plane ride and one incredibly hellish layover in LaGuardia later; Ricky was back in the US, back in White Crest, and apparently on his way to a rave that Todd was DJing at. Truth be told it wasn’t the thing he wanted most to be doing right now; a long bath and about three straight days of sleep sounded a lot better. But even though he was still adjusting to his human body after a straight week and a half in his true form with his extended family and was still trying to figure out how to move with legs instead of swimming, he was happy to be home with Winston and Rio. Even if they were crammed into the back seat of a taxi. “I need something with caffeine or I’m going to pass out. I haven’t even had time to unpack yet; I wore these clothes on the plane, and I am not nearly awake or put together enough to make it through tonight without some help” They all fell out of the cab and Ricky stretched, sauntering up to the door with a smile on his face. “Hey. Cordero, Dane, and Quinn. We’re here as guests of the DJ.” He held out their tickets and waited for them to be let in, turning to his friends as the walked into what felt like a solid wall of sound, even to Ricky’s terrible hearing. “Well. To the bar?”

As a large and very muscular bouncer led them through to the warehouse which had been brightly decorated in UV paint, Winston headed straight for the bar and probably would’ve made it if they weren’t accosted by a number of scantily clad men and women who attacked Winston with paint similar to that which was decorating the walls in patterns of eyes, spirals and cascades of colour that shone brightly in the darkness. The music was booming and before Winston knew it they were as brightly coloured as the walls, their t shirt was ruined and they definitely needed a drink now if they hadn’t needed one before. “Three actually six jaeger bombs please and like a vodka coke,” Winston passed the bombs round to their friends and swallowed them with a grimace, gross. They immediately regretted their drink of choice and tried to slam away the taste with copious amounts of vodka coke which some how made it worse. “Uh, maybe this wasn’t a good idea?”

The group was ambushed by some fanatic painters. Orion’s hoodie and jeans were sacrificed to their whim, and though Rio mostly let them do their thing, he was very adamant about his sleeves remaining down as they trailed their brushes across him. They compromised by spending extra time on his face and neck, which only slightly stressed him out knowing that he had no way of knowing what they had drawn on him. He was totally lying; it really stressed him out. Even more reason to drink. Winston ordered a concerning amount of shots at the bar and Rio tried calming himself down. This was what he had wanted, right? “I uh- can you just make me something super sweet? Like really really sweet.” Rio smiled nervously, pulling the fake ID that Athena had procured for him out of his wallet. The bartender barely gave it a second glance before shuffling off to make their drinks. “Is this where I die?” Rio found himself asking aloud, taking a moment to glance around the place. It was packed wall to wall with glowing, dancing people. The music was deafeningly loud and it was way too hot for the hoodie that Rio refused to take off. Rio didn’t waste any time when the bartender brought the drinks over. He slammed the first shot as quickly as he could, immediately coughing and clearing his throat. “Oh my god ew! Oh god this stuff tastes like battery acid. Why would they make this? This was a terrible idea.”

It was only because he’d let Winston and Rio enter the warehouse before him that Ricky had enough time to react to the glow paint artists, whipping his shirt off and tucking it into his back pocket before they covered him with geometric designs that pulsed in time with the flashing lights. He pounded the two Jaeger bombs that Winston had ordered him, wry smile crossing his face as it looked like Rio might die from the alcohol content, “Only the first two taste like battery acid. It’s when they start tasting good that you gotta start worrying about how fucked up you’re getting.” He ordered himself a vodka soda and looked around the crowd, sipping his drink. This might not have been exactly what he’d wanted to do on his first night home but he was getting enough appreciative looks from appropriately handsome men to make this night potentially worthwhile. “This was a great idea, Winston. Don’t even second guess it. We’re supporting our bro, getting drunk, and getting his on by crowds of people who appreciate the fact that all three of us are studs. Should we go say hey to Todd? Least let him know we’re here jamming out to his set?” Finishing his drink he ordered another one, tipping the bartender heavily as he started to wind his way through the crowd and up towards the DJ booth.

The crowd pulsed and throbbed as everyone danced. Winston could barely help themselves from getting into the mood. They were pretty drunk now, two jaeger bombs and the vodka, not to mention everything they’d had before. Grabbing Orion’s hand, Winston dragged their friend slowly through the dance floor. “Battery acid is exactly what I imagine these taste like, but they’re also going to make this way more bearable way faster.” It was hot and Winston couldn’t imagine how Orion could stand being in just a hoodie but they weren’t about to push the matter as they slowly made their way through the crowd of sweaty bodies that were doing their best to move along to the thrum of the bass and the blare of the drums. “It’s going to take us forever to get towards the stage,” Winston was sure that being on Todd’s guest list meant that they could do this the easy way, but right now they were too drunk to really think clearly and honestly, if they were going to do this then they might as well enjoy themselves, “Ricky you gotta go first and clear us a way you beefcake.” Winston giggled tipsily, unsure if their friends had even heard a word they said over the roar of the crowd and the hum of the music. Maybe slightly against their better judgement Winston was starting to enjoy the end of the world. Why not have a good time? Right?

Winston and Ricky was the only solace that Orion had right now. They were grounding him in many ways. Mentally, they were keeping his anxiety from completely spiraling. Physically, they were the only reason that Rio hadn’t ran from the place as soon as he stepped foot inside of it. Right now, the only thing Rio could focus one as how hot it was. He was sweating, and kept pushing his soaked hair out of his eyes with the hand that wasn’t being dragged through the dance floor by Winston. “He is a beefcake isn’t he?” Rio giggled, shutting himself up by taking a long sip from the fruity drink the bartender had mixed him. It tasted way better than those shots had. Rio took another drink. People pushed against them as they pushed onward and Rio found himself ducking and dodging flailing arms as they danced to the music. How did they think with how loud the music was? The dim lighting, trippy glowing colors, deafening music and crowd was making Rio dizzy. The place was disorienting enough, but Winston’s hand dragging wrapped around his was making Rio’s head spin all it’s own. Another drink. “Do you think Todd hates me?” Rio found himself asking, a question he would usually never ask anyone aloud, especially mutual friends of the guy. The alcohol was working way too quickly. Another nervous drink. “Don’t answer that that was dumb. Let’s just find Todd.” Another drink. Oh no, he was almost out already. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Oh jesus. You guys are already drunk?” Ricky slammed back his drink as they made their way through the crowd, effortlessly parting the sea of people with his aptly-described beefcakeness, “That’s me. Dumb of brain, thicc of heart and ass.” He made sure he had an eye on both Winston and Rio at all times; this definitely didn’t seem like either of their scenes and he wasn’t about to lose them to a random drug trip induced by someone random ravegoer. He almost missed Rio’s question, and it was only because he’d turned around to check on them that he was able to read the other man’s lips, “What? Of course not. I don’t think Todd is capable of hating anyone, like biologically. It’s in that man’s blood to just love everyone and be the chillest of chill bois.” As they passed by a smaller secondary bar on their way to the DJ booth Ricky ordered a couple of shots and pounded them in quick succession, “It’s harder for me to get drunk.” He explained as he set the small glasses back on the bar and gave the bartender a nod, “We got more blood than you guys.” Eventually he muscled, smiled, and danced them a path through the dancefloor up to the booth where Todd looked like a) he was having the time of his life and b) he was on about seven different drugs. This close to a bank of speakers it was impossible for Ricky to hear anything except the bass so he just waved and shot Todd a smile and a thumbs up; those were pretty universal, right?

“Hey, we’re not all build like a brick shit house Ricky,” Winston replied with a giggle as they sipped their drink through a straw and gently squeezed Rio’s hand. They could barely hear anything that Rio was saying, but they were pretty sure he’d just said something about Todd hating him. Which was absurd. “Of course Todd doesn’t hate you, Ricky’s right, he couldn’t hate you if he tried.” They flashed them a reassuring smile and had to admit that they kind of envied the amount that Ricky could drink. He seemed like he was having a good time on his own without needing to be drunk. It took them slightly longer to get over to Ricky and Todd, as they were separated in the buzz and hum of the crowd. Left with just Rio, Winston was eventually able to pull them close enough to Todd to wave from the crowd and grin, but despite the potential impending end of the world, Winston had to admit that they loved this song. “Fuck, this is actually pretty fun,” they said dancing in place, hand still clutching Rio’s fingers, “I’m probably just really drunk.”

Orion felt a little bit better, with the assurance that Todd didn’t hate him. At least as far as Ricky and Winston are concerned. Rio was way too aware that he wasn’t sober. Or maybe he wasn’t nearly as aware as he thought he was. Was that possible? Was drunk Rio capable of being faux aware of being drunk without actually realizing just how drunk he was? Did any of that make any sense? The confusion made Rio giggle. Rio knew his tolerance was going to be awful considering he hadn't drank before, but he had hoped that being a hunter might give him at least some semblance of an advantage. But Winston was clearly just as bad off, because he was suddenly dancing along to the music, a song that Rio wasn’t familiar with. There was a noticeable difference now. Even drunk Rio could tell. Before, moving through the crowd together it just made sense that the two would hold onto each other so they didn’t lose their way. Now… well the two were standing next to one another and Rio’s fingers were still in Winston’s grasp. “You’re definitely drunk” Rio laughed, watching them dance along to the music without moving their feet. It was more swaying than anything else. “I think I’m drunk too.” Rio admitted. Was two shots and a mixed drink normal for someone to get drunk off of? Despite his internal monologue telling him not to, Rio found himself starting to sway in rhythm with Winston, trying to play along with him. If he tried to focus on the music he might be able to ignore how the only part of his body that he could focus on was the hand that Winston was holding onto. “I’m uh- I’m glad I came here. With you and Ricky.”

It was a semi-familiar sensation to Ricky to stand on the outside watching other people. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Winston had grabbed Rio’s hand when they’d started working their way through the dancefloor, and it definitely didn’t escape his notice that the hand holding hadn’t stopped when they’d reached the DJ booth. He watched as they both drunkenly started to dance, a wry smile across his face. It wasn’t the strangest pairing he’d seen. Honestly it sort of made a strange sense. Ricky started to dance with a guy who’d been giving him a meaningful look while he kept an eye on his friends. Nothing wrong with cutting loose and having fun but he didn’t want either of them to end up the meal of some rave-stalking monster. Which in White Crest was a distinct possibility. The song made a smooth transition into the next one in the set, expertly guided by Todd’s skill, and Ricky leaned in to take the sharpie offered by his dance partner, quickly scribbling his number on the back of the man’s hand before moving back to stand near Todd. He was still close enough to keep an eye on Winston and Rio but not so close that he was infringing on whatever moment they were about to have.

The world was spinning. But gently. Winston lumbered around, convinced that they were the most graceful dancer that had ever lived. The music slammed, pulsed and pounded. Todd was so good at this Winston thought as they slipped closer to Orion for a moment before prancing away (okay maybe it was more like a stumble). Their head felt thick and Winston wasn’t sure that they were that drunk. Then the world took a turn and Winston fell into Orion. Their hands coming apart for a moment and Winston couldn’t help but grip Orion’s surprisingly muscular shoulder. It wasn’t that he was Ricky ripped. There were no muscles glistening at obtuse sizes. Rio was just toned. The muscles were there but they weren’t for display or pretention (Ricky). Orion always kept everything covered up, always wore long hoodies or jeans or whatever and Winston wondered why in that moment they weren’t dying from the heat. But they didn’t care, they couldn’t let go, not for a second. Sure they’d used Rio to keep themselves standing, but it was more then that now. Winston’s breath caught in their throat as they looked into deep hazel eyes. Biting their lip, Winston felt the Earth stop spinning for a moment.

Orion had finally relaxed. The music was still too loud. People still crowded around Rio’s personal space. And it felt like Rio may have a heat stroke at any moment. But he had pushed all of that to the back of his mind. Because he was having fun. With Winston, dancing here and definitely drunk. He didn’t even care about how dizzy or lightheaded he felt. Rio was convinced that Winston’s hand holding onto his was the only thing keeping him from floating off into space. When Winston practically fell into Rio, something else finally clicked into place. This was what Rio wanted. Rio knew that things were different with Winston. That the way he felt for them was different than his other friends. But Rio had never looked further into it. Had never wanted to. It made sense. Winston had it all. They were smart and talented. They were passionate about things and had a lot in common with Rio. They were really, really pretty. In spite of the alcohol and music drowning out his senses, Rio’s feelings for Winston were overwhelmingly clear in this moment. And that was terrifying. “Uh- you okay there?” Rio asked, trying to sound concerned but way too busy processing. Plus, he was pretty sure he was also laughing at how clumsy Winston had been.

Giggling, Winston felt someone brush past him. They must’ve been big because Winston was pushed closer to Rio. they basically had their arms drunkenly wrapped around their ‘friend’ at that point and Rio’s lips looked so soft. The world swirled and Winston was having the best time. Despite the odor of sweat and the sticky floor. Not to mention several drinks which had already been spilled on them making them smell of stale beer, Winston couldn’t help but admit to themselves that Rio might be the best smelling thing that they had ever encountered. Their eyes were captivating and Winston couldn’t help themselves. One second they were just looking into Orion’s eyes. Then they weren’t sure what they did. They weren’t sure why they did. They weren’t even completely sure how they managed to do it but they were stood staring at Rio one second and the next Winston was kissing him. Gently at first, their lips just brushing against one another, Winston could feel the other breathing and they couldn’t help but close the gap between them, pulling Rio close as they embraced him.

Orion wasn’t sure who initiated it. Right now, Rio wasn’t sure how he was able to keep himself from toppling over. All he knew was that one minute the two had been dancing and laughing and now they were kissing. Rio fumbled his way through it. Intoxication may actually be working in his favor, helping to make up for the lack of experience and general awkwardness that under normal circumstances may have sent Rio spiraling. This was his first real kiss right? Sure, Winn had kissed him in acting class but that had been during a scene. It was in character. It wasn’t real. This was real. And it didn’t take long for Rio to forget any fears and melt into it. He ignored the added heat and welcomed Winston moving in closer, Rio wrapped their arms around their neck as if letting go would end the moment. Rio was desperate for this moment to not end. Who cared that they were in public and that a million people could see them? Who cared that Rio usually hated PDA. All he cared about right now was this moment with Winston.

Honestly. Winston had never really dated a lot. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested, it was more that other people weren’t necessarily interested in them. Which was fine. Winston had been busy for a long time, working on a million and one different projects. Always too busy to pursue someone who would just reject them anyway. But suddenly, in that moment Winston knew that they had been missing out. If every kiss felt like this then Winston was sure that there was something here that they should’ve been doing way sooner then this. Holding Rio tightly, they kissed them until they couldn’t help but pull back for air. There was a feeling of elation, of intoxication … fuck Winston didn’t know if they were just drunk but they wanted to kiss Rio again and so they did. Why not? What did they have to lose at the end of the world anyway?

If the world truly was ending, this was exactly how Orion wanted things to go. With Winston, exactly like this. And Ricky... speaking of him, where was Ricky? The urge to scope the place out for him was distracted when Winston kissed him again. “Holy... Woah” Was the most poetic thing that Rio could manage to mutter once the two had pulled apart again. Rio was gasping for breath, a mixture of the heat and making up for the oxygen Rio had deprived himself of while making out with Winston. This was exactly what Rio had wanted, and Rio couldn’t help but be... happy. The thought made Rio’s stomach twist. The other shoe has to drop soon right? Something would have to go wrong. It always went wrong. Because the world wasn’t ending. Even if right now, Rio would have been perfectly fine with that. For the longest time, Rio had thought that the kiss had sobered him up. He hadn’t felt more grounded since they had arrived and he hadn’t been thinking this clearly in days. But it all came rushing back to him now. Rio was dizzy, sounds around him were nothing more than a loud buzzing and the contents of his stomach swam, threatening to force themselves back up. “So sorry- I just I have to uh- bathroom. Need bathroom.” Rio tried stating clearly before abandoning the attempt completely and rushing off into the crowding, desperately trying to push his way through before he completely lost his cool. And his dinner.

Winston was convinced that they were in heaven. They couldn’t breath but they didn’t need to breath. They had everything they needed and if they could have made a moment exist and last for a life time then Winston would’ve wished for this moment to span for centuries and millenia because in that second they realised all at once just how strongly they felt for Rio. He was so smart, and so kind and he cared so much about doing the right thing that he had rejected his birth identity and his own family because he couldn’t do what they were asking of him. Winston had never met anyone who was so good and pure and kind and Winston didn’t know how to deal with these feelings. “Oh, of course, sure, no … worries.” With that, Orion was gone and the kiss with it. Winston felt panic crack in their stomach and turned to look for Ricky. But he was gone. Either with someone else or the jet lag was too much. Catching Todd’s eye, Winston made it clear that they were heading out and decided to give Orion some space. Texting them that they were heading home, Winston left the club, much drunker and much more ashamed then they’d been when they came in.

This was terribly macabre, and thus terribly White Crest. Beach balls painted white to look like eyes decorated this distasteful establishment, and even with ear buds in the music pulsed too loudly to be comfortable. Although if the world was ending, who cared about ear health? It was nothing in comparison to a banshee scream, but still unpleasant. Quieter, gentler music appealed to her more, but the talent at play here was undeniable. Her eyes drifted to the stage, as the DJ announced the end of his set, and another began. She squeezed through the crowd, under sweaty arm pits and past leering men, hurrying to meet him. He’d caught her eye last time, too, but she hadn’t been able to get close then. Now, there were no friends to squeeze through. “You’re Todd, the DJ that performed the last set, right? You were incredible.” The artistic potential rolled off him like waves in high tide. She looked him over, a smile curling over her features. Oh yes, he would do ever so nicely. Lydia’s stomach rumbled. “You look like you might like some company.”

#wickedswriting #para #p: orion #p: lydia #p: ricky #chatzy #chatzy para #its the end of the world

15 notes · View notes

bluewatsons · 4 years

Text

Joseph A. Harriss, The Elusive Marc Chagall, Smithsonian Magazine (December 2003)

With his wild and whimsical imagery, the Russian-born artist bucked the trends of 20th-century art

David McNeil fondly remembers the day in the early 1960s his father took him to a little bistro on Paris’ Île St. Louis, the kind of place where they scrawl the menu in white letters on the mirror behind the bar, and masons, house painters, plumbers and other workingmen down hearty lunches along with vin ordinaire. Wearing a beret, a battered jacket and a coarse, checkered shirt, his father— then in his mid-70s—fit in perfectly. With conversation flowing easily among the close-set tables, one of the patrons looked over at the muscular, paint-splotched hands of the man in the beret. “Working on a place around here?” he asked companionably. “Yeah,” replied McNeil’s father, the artist Marc Chagall, as he tucked into his appetizer of hard-boiled egg and mayonnaise. “I’m redoing a ceiling over at the Opéra.”

Chagall, the Russian-born painter who went against the current of 20th-century art with his fanciful images of blue cows, flying lovers, biblical prophets and green-faced fiddlers on roofs, had a firm idea of who he was and what he wanted to accomplish. But when it came to guarding his privacy, he was a master of deflection. Sometimes when people approached to ask if he was that famous painter Marc Chagall, he would answer, “No,” or more absurdly, “I don’t think so,” or point to someone else and say slyly, “Maybe that’s him.” With his slanting, pale-blue eyes, his unruly hair and the mobile face of a mischievous faun, Chagall gave one biographer the impression that he was “always slightly hallucinating.” One of those who knew him best, Virginia Haggard McNeil, David’s mother and Chagall’s companion for seven years, characterized him as “full of contradictions—generous and guarded, naïve and shrewd, explosive and secret, humorous and sad, vulnerable and strong.”

Chagall himself said he was a dreamer who never woke up. “Some art historians have sought to decrypt his symbols,” says Jean-Michel Foray, director of the Marc Chagall Biblical Message Museum in Nice, “but there’s no consensus on what they mean. We cannot interpret them because they are simply part of his world, like figures from a dream.” Pablo Picasso, his sometime friend and rival (“What a genius, that Picasso,” Chagall once joked. “It’s a pity he doesn’t paint”), marveled at the Russian’s feeling for light and the originality of his imagery. “I don’t know where he gets those images. . . . ” said Picasso. “He must have an angel in his head.”

Throughout his 75-year career, during which he produced an astounding 10,000 works, Chagall continued to incorporate figurative and narrative elements (however enigmatic) into his paintings. His warm, human pictorial universe, full of personal metaphor, set him apart from much of 20th-century art, with its intellectual deconstruction of objects and arid abstraction. As a result, the public has generally loved his work, while the critics were often dismissive, complaining of sentimentality, repetition and the use of stock figures.

A major retrospective of Chagall’s unique, often puzzling images was recently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, following a highly acclaimed run at the Grand Palais in Paris. The first comprehensive exhibition of Chagall’s paintings since 1985 brought together more than 150 works from all periods of his career, many never before seen in the United States, including cloth-and-paper collages from the private collection of his granddaughter Meret Meyer Graber. The exhibition, says Foray, the chief organizer of the show, “offered a fresh opportunity to appreciate Chagall as the painter who restored to art the elements that modern artists rejected, such as allegory and narrative—art as a comment on life. Today he is coming back strong after a period of neglect, even in his home country.” Retrospectives are planned for 2005 at the Museum of Russian Art in St. Petersburg and at the State Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow.

Movcha (Moses) Chagal was, as he put it, “born dead” on July 7, 1887, in the Belorussian town of Vitebsk, near the Polish border. His distraught family pricked the limp body of their firstborn with needles to try to stimulate a response. Desperate, they then took the infant outside and put him in a stone trough of cold water. Suddenly the baby boy began to whimper. With that rude introduction to life, it’s no wonder that Marc Chagall, as he later chose to be known in Paris, stuttered as a boy and was subject to fainting. “I was scared of growing up,” he told Virginia McNeil. “Even in my twenties I preferred dreaming about love and painting it in my pictures.”

Chagall’s talent for drawing hardly cheered his poor and numerous family, which he, as the eldest of nine children, was expected to help support. His father, Khatskel-Mordechai Chagal, worked in a herring warehouse; his mother, Feiga- Ita Chernina, ran a small grocery store. Both nominally adhered to Hasidic Jewish religious beliefs, which forbade graphic representation of anything created by God. Thus Chagall grew up in a home devoid of images. Still, he pestered his mother until she took him to an art school run by a local portraitist. Chagall, in his late teens, was the only student who used the vivid color violet.Apious uncle refused to shake his hand after he began painting figures.

For all his subsequent pictorial reminiscing about Vitebsk, Chagall found it stifling and provincial—“a strange town, an unhappy town, a boring town,” he called it in his memoirs. In 1906, at age 19, he wangled a small sum of money from his father and left for St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the drawing school of the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. But he hated classical art training. “I, poor country lad, was obliged to acquaint myself thoroughly with the wretched nostrils of Alexander of Macedonia or some other plaster imbecile,” he recalled. The meager money soon ran out, and although he made a few kopecks retouching photographs and painting signs, he sometimes collapsed from hunger. His world broadened in 1909 when he signed up for an art class in St. Petersburg taught by Leon Bakst, who, having been to Paris, carried an aura of sophistication. Bakst indulged Chagall’s expressive, unconventional approach to painting and dropped names, exotic to the young man’s ears, such as Manet, Cézanne and Matisse. He spoke of painting cubes and squares, of an artist who cut off his ear.

“Paris!” Chagall wrote in his autobiography. “No word sounded sweeter to me!” By 1911, at age 24, he was there, thanks to a stipend of 40 rubles a month from a supportive member of the Duma, Russia’s elective assembly, who had taken a liking to the young artist. When he arrived, he went directly to the Louvre to look at the famous works of art there. In time he found a room at an artists’ commune in a circular, three-story building near Montparnasse called La Ruche (The Beehive). He lived frugally. Often he’d cut a herring in half, the head for one day, the tail for the next. Friends who came to his door had to wait while he put on his clothes; he painted in the nude to avoid staining his only outfit. At La Ruche, Chagall rubbed shoulders with painters like Fernand Léger, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and Robert Delaunay. True to his nature as a storyteller, however, he seemed to have more in common with such writers as French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who described Chagall’s work as “supernatural.” Another friend, Blaise Cendrars, a restless, knockabout writer, penned a short poem about Chagall: “Suddenly he paints / He grabs a church and paints with a church / He grabs a cow and paints with a cow.”

Many consider Chagall’s work during his four-year stay in Paris his most boldly creative. Reconnoitering the then-prevalent trends of Cubism and Fauvism, he absorbed aspects of each into his own work. There was his Cubist-influenced Temptation (Adam and Eve); the disconcerting Introduction, with a seven-fingered man holding his head under his arm; and the parti-colored Acrobat, showing Chagall’s fondness for circus scenes. At La Ruche he also painted his explosive Dedicated to My Fiancée, which he tossed off in a single night’s feverish work and later submitted to a major Paris exhibition. It took some artful persuasion on his part to convince the show’s organizers that the topsy-turvy mix of hands, legs and a leering bull’s head was not, as they contended, pornographic.

Returning to Vitebsk in 1914 with the intention of staying only briefly, Chagall was trapped by the outbreak of World War I. At least that meant spending time with his fiancée, Bella Rosenfeld, the beautiful, cultivated daughter of one of the town’s wealthiest families. Bella had won a gold medal as one of Russia’s top high-school students, had studied in Moscow and had ambitions to be an actress. But she had fallen for Chagall’s strange, almond-shaped eyes and often knocked on his window to bring him cakes and milk. “I had only to open the window of my room and blue air, love and flowers entered with her,” Chagall later wrote. Despite her family’s worries that she would starve as the wife of an artist, the pair married in 1915; Chagall was 28, Bella, 23. In his 1914- 18 Above the Town (one of his many paintings of flying lovers), he and Bella soar blissfully above Vitebsk.

In 1917 Chagall embraced the Bolshevik Revolution. He liked that the new regime gave Jews full citizenship and no longer required them to carry passports to leave their designated region. And he was pleased to be appointed commissar for art in Vitebsk, where he started an art school and brought in avant-garde teachers. But it soon became clear that the revolutionaries preferred abstract art and Socialist Realism— and how, they wondered, did the comrade’s blue cows and floating lovers support Marxism-Leninism? Giving up his job as commissar in 1920, Chagall moved to Moscow, where he painted decorative panels for the State Jewish Chamber Theater. But ultimately unhappy with Soviet life, he left for Berlin in 1922 and settled in Paris a year and a half later along with Bella and their 6-year-old daughter, Ida.

In Paris, a new door opened for Chagall when he met the influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned him to illustrate an edition of the poetic classic the Fables of La Fontaine. Chauvinistic French officials cried scandal over the choice of a Russian Jew, a mere “Vitebsk sign painter,” to illustrate a masterpiece of French letters. But that blew over, and Chagall went on to do a series of resonant illustrations of the Bible for Vollard.

Increasingly alarmed by Nazi persecution of the Jews, Chagall made a strong political statement on canvas in 1938 with his White Crucifixion. Then 51 and in his artistic prime, he por- trayed the crucified Christ, his loins covered with a prayer shawl, as a symbol of the suffering of all Jews. In the painting, a synagogue and houses are in flames, a fleeing Jew clutches a Torah to his breast, and emigrants try to escape in a rudimentary boat. Not long after, in June 1941, Chagall and his wife boarded a ship for the United States, settling in New York City. The six years Chagall spent in America were not his happiest. He never got used to the pace of New York life, never learned English. “It took me thirty years to learn bad French,” he said, “why should I try to learn English?” One of the things he did enjoy was strolling through Lower Manhattan, buying strudel and gefilte fish, and reading Yiddish newspapers. His palette during these years often darkened to a tragic tone, with depictions of a burning Vitebsk and fleeing rabbis. When Bella, his muse, confidante and best critic, died suddenly in 1944 of a viral infection at age 52, “everything turned black,” Chagall wrote.

After weeks of sitting in his apartment on Riverside Drive immersed in grief, tended to by his daughter, Ida, then 28 and married, he began to work again. Ida found a French-speaking English woman, Virginia McNeil, to be his housekeeper. A diplomat’s daughter, and bright, rebellious and cosmopolitan, McNeil had been born in Paris and raised in Bolivia and Cuba, but had recently fallen on hard times. She was married to John McNeil, a Scottish painter who suffered from depression, and she had a 5-year-old daughter, Jean, to support. She was 30 and Chagall 57 when they met, and before long the two were talking painting, then dining together. Afew months later Virginia left her husband and went with Chagall to live in High Falls, New York, a village in the Catskills. They bought a simple wooden house with an adjoining cottage for him to use as a studio.

Though Chagall would do several important public works in the United States—sets and costumes for a 1942 American Ballet Theatre production of Tchaikovsky’sAleko and a 1945 version of Stravinsky’s Firebird, and later large murals for Lincoln Center and stained-glass windows for the United Nations headquarters and the Art Institute of Chicago—he remained ambivalent about America. “I know I must live in France, but I don’t want to cut myself off from America,” he once said. “France is a picture already painted. America still has to be painted. Maybe that’s why I feel freer there. But when I work in America, it’s like shouting in a forest. There’s no echo.” In 1948 he returned to France with Virginia, their son, David, born in 1946, and Virginia’s daughter. They eventually settled in Provence, in the hilltop town of Vence. But Virginia chafed in her role, as she saw it, of “the wife of the Famous Artist, the charming hostess to Important People,” and abruptly left Chagall in 1951, taking the two children with her. Once again the resourceful Ida found her father a housekeeper— this time in the person of Valentina Brodsky, a 40- year-old Russian living in London. Chagall, then 65, and Vava, as she was known, soon married.

The new Mrs. Chagall managed her husband’s affairs with an iron hand. “She tended to cut him off from the world,” says David McNeil, 57, an author and songwriter who lives in Paris. “But he didn’t really mind because what he needed most was a manager to give him peace and quiet so he could get on with his work. I never saw him answer a telephone himself. After Vava took over, I don’t think he ever saw his bank statements and didn’t realize how wealthy he was. He taught me to visit the Louvre on Sunday, when it was free, and he always picked up all the sugar cubes on the table before leaving a restaurant.” McNeil and his half sister, Ida, who died in 1994 at age 78, gradually found themselves seeing less of their father. But to all appearances Chagall’s married life was a contented one, and images of Vava appear in many of his paintings.

In addition to canvases, Chagall produced lithographs, etchings, sculptures, ceramics, mosaics and tapestries. He also took on such demanding projects as designing stainedglass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah-HebrewUniversityMedicalCenter in Jerusalem. His ceiling for the Paris Opéra, painted in 1963-64 and peopled with Chagall angels, lovers, animals and Parisian monuments, provided a dramatic contrast to the pompous, academic painting and decoration in the rest of the Opéra.

“He prepared his charcoal pencils, holding them in his hand like a little bouquet,” McNeil wrote of his father’s working methods in a memoir that was published in France last spring. “Then he would sit in a large straw chair and look at the blank canvas or cardboard or sheet of paper, waiting for the idea to come. Suddenly he would raise the charcoal with his thumb and, very fast, start tracing straight lines, ovals, lozenges, finding an aesthetic structure in the incoherence. Aclown would appear, a juggler, a horse, a violinist, spectators, as if by magic. When the outline was in place, he would back off and sit down, exhausted like a boxer at the end of a round.”

Some critics said he drew badly. “Of course I draw badly,” Chagall once said. “I like drawing badly.” Perhaps worse, from the critics’ point of view, he did not fit easily into the accepted canon of modernity. “Impressionism and Cubism are foreign to me,” he wrote. “Art seems to me to be above all a state of soul. . . . Let them eat their fill of their square pears on their triangular tables!”

Notes veteran art critic Pierre Schneider, “Chagall absorbed Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism, Expressionism and other modern art trends incredibly fast when he was starting out. But he used them only to suit his own aesthetic purposes. That makes it hard for art critics and historians to label him. He can’t be pigeonholed.”

When he died in Saint Paul de Vence on March 28, 1985, at 97, Chagall was still working, still the avant-garde artist who refused to be modern. That was the way he said he wanted it: “To stay wild, untamed . . . to shout, weep, pray.”

#art #images #biography #marc chagall #jewish artists #painting

15 notes · View notes