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kai-eastaughffe · 5 years

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truth or dare; kai eastaughffe

The night already peaked by the time Kai’s turn was up. He had come down off the high off the lip sync battle---gracefully conceeded to Samuel, on the basis that one man sacrificing his dignity to Avril Lavigne should logically outweigh what essentially became a group dance-off with Lady Marmalade, and the excellence of that was in no way Kai’s doing---and he was slumped on the floor half-wasted already by the time he was poked in the ribs and forced back to attention.

He wasn’t looking forward to whatever people had planned for him. There’d already been a few curve balls, and he was, frankly, really worried about Salem, and Cleo. But, he couldn’t very well refuse after making most of the squad do whatever had popped into his head.

from cleo raja —

truth: what’s one thing you would change about everyone here?

dare: consume everything in the minibar, alcohol aside, in five minutes.

He could not afford the contents of the minibar at this point, even not including the alcohol. Nor did he want to.

“Simple. We’d all have colour-coded or elemental or animal super powers, à la Power Rangers, or Sailor Moon.” He shrugged.

“We have never been, nor can we ever be, a proper friend group, since we don’t have a transformation sequence.” He downed the rest of his drink. Tonight was the first night he was really letting himself consume as much alcohol as he wanted---it seemed fitting. Then he continued, before anyone else could take over.

“See, Salem would be something dark and edgy like a black motif with ice and a panther, Leigh would be like a sassy lion and the colour orange. Danny would be yellow and something that flies, an eagle? TJ would be green with like, an alligator or a snake, Cleo would be red and maybe a badass scorpion or spider or a biker thing going on. Jenny might also be red---I feel like you’d rock the pink outfit, though, and maybe have some secret like you can control time and are the most powerful of us and no one knows it. Skylar would be purple and wind powers, something pretty like a butterfly but like---deceptive, her wingbeats make hurricanes, I dunno. Sam’d be blue, cause it’s like “leader-y”, but he’d have like... sweet water powers or maybe a wolf thing going on... I dunno. Dakota would be white, and his power would be...” Here he blanked. “To perfectly slice a bagel, or he’d turn into an airplane? I don’t know what your deal is these days, I dunno who you are, dude. Jules would be gold and control the sun, probably. Kelley would be silver---not because she’s second best though, silver ‘cause she’d turn into like a thousand knives, or just a fuckin’ tank.”

“And I’d be the, uhhh... Turquoise Ranger. There’s never a Turquoise anything. But it’s cool, ‘cause I’d also have a sloth patronus or whatever, and you guys would still have to bring me along anyway.” He folded his hands and surveyed the circle seriously.

“The defense rests.” Lawyer-talk, bonus points. He mimed sinking a basketball, for good measure.

from dakota harrison —

truth: who do you dislike most out of all of us?

dare: arm wrestle me.

It only took one glance at Kota’s arms before Kai scoffed. “Yeah, right. That’s happening---real suspense in who’d win, you clearly just want to look good. I’ll take truth... Who I dislike most...” He thought about it for a heartbeat, squinting around at the assembled group. Sure, there were some there he could take or leave, but no one he truly, deeply disliked more than... “Myself, obviously. Not that you’re not all terrible in your own special ways.”

There was a deafening silence, and he glanced around. “What? Too edgy? It’s called a truth for a reason---” Someone helpfully pointed out that answering yourself was against the rules, and he grew slightly more irritated with all of them. But only for a second. “Fuck you guys, let me be the emo one for once.” He sighed. “Whatever, let’s just... give the people what they want.” He rolled up his right sleeve, and leaned forward to plant his arm in the middle of the circle before flashing Dakota a wide smile and saying, “Bring it, Beardface. And I mean it---you throw this out of pity or something and I will destroy you some other way when you least expect it.”

from jenny jordan —

truth: what was the cause of your weirdest boner?

dare: put five ice cubes down your pants and leave them there.

“Saying no to the ice dick, thanks, darlin’.” It was a little hard to look at her longer than a second without remembering what she’d said about his eyes and... all that. He still hadn’t quite recovered from the stuff people had said on their turns. Skylar thinking he had a good personality was... misguided, but okay... Salem’s was intentionally weird (as he’d requested, so that one was probably on him.) But Jenny’s confession had taken him utterly by surprise and he still wasn’t sure whether she’d been entirely serious, or if she’d had some other reason for praising him.

He cleared his throat. “Weirdest boner? Mr. Fuller’s math class, apropos of trigonometry. Isosceles triangles just do it for me, I guess. Or, it was the hell that is puberty, and a light breeze could have the same effect, so.” He was answering a lot of truths, it turned out. Whether that would grow uncomfortable in the near future, he wasn’t sure, but at least for once it was a game of embarrassment for everyone, not just him.

from julian campbell —

truth: who in the room has hurt your feelings the most, and how?

dare: do your best impression of three people in the room - really commit to it.

Well, he knew he wasn’t gonna touch that truth with a ten foot pole. He’s not certain who he’d answer, anyway. Most of the incidents kind of blurred together, and the ones that really stung weren’t things he was willing to admit under any kind of torture. Which left him eyeing the other individuals for targets.

Of course, the more sensible thing would be to separate the impressions. But once he’d settled on them, a scene was already forming in his mind---and they had a brief stint taking Drama in high school to thank for that, he figured. “Alright, but I need props...” With an effort, he pushed himself up, then travelled around the room collecting what would be most effective---a pair of oversized sunglasses, a phone, a scarf, a pair of big headphones from his own bag tossed in the corner, and... yeah, that’d work.

He then proceeded to enact a familiar situation to all of them, Jenny and Salem being catty at each other---sunglasses perched artfully on a dismissive smirk when it was her lines, scarf draped around his neck lazily for pretentiousness rather than representing any particular habit of Salem’s, but it worked, and Cleo in the headphones, snapping peevishly at the others as she looked at her phone at intervals.

By the end of five minutes his brain was stretched to capacity, he’d nearly strangled himself twice in headphone cords and the scarf, and the sunglasses were haphazardly pushed into his hair. “...in conclusion, you’re petty assholes who need to handle your issues better, and I don’t know why I love you,” he finished, breathlessly, before collapsing backwards on the floor.

from salem st. ives —

truth: did you cheat to get through law school?

dare: spend the rest of the game blind folded and wear ear plugs under headphones turned full blast (so that any other dares can get done to him and he’ll have no idea who did it).

He wrinkled his nose at the dare. “I would have to be horribly masochistic to be into that, I hope you know that. And I’m only like... maybe lightly masochistic most days, so you’ll just have to be treated to my full presence for the rest of the game.” It was hard to sweep a mocking bow while seated, but he tried to give one to Salem with minimal spillage of his drink.

“And I...” He paused, and covered it by sipping at the medley of alcohol in his cup---was it his? Had he just picked it up? It tasted like sour patch kids, and he was fairly sure he’d had something in the brownish family. “Is this someone else’s drink?” he asked, keeping the suspicion that maybe he was being pranked---extra bonus prank on Kai night, you know---a private one. “Anyway, it’s delicious, so thanks.” The potential prankster could have their laugh, his drink was delightful. “As I was saying, I did not cheat in law school.” It was, he told himself, the absolute truth. He’d never even been in law school---so how could he cheat? His smirk lost some of its pep when he remembered why that wasn’t exactly the triumph it should be. Someone, somewhere, had actually been in law school and not cheated---but it sure as hell wasn’t him. His mouth tasted bitter, and the stolen drink didn’t help any.

from samuel flores —

truth: do you still resent how the squad treated you in high school?

dare: prank call one of your coworkers.

And there it was. The kicker. ‘Cause he didn’t have coworkers to call---unless you counted Jeremy and Yolanda from the sandwich shop. Who would not take kindly to being disturbed---high priced lawyers might shrug that shit off as a laugh. Minimum wage dishwashers, or his manager, would not. And, believe it or not, he actually liked his coworkers. They thought he was good at his job---and he was, obviously, but they treated him like he was. He wasn’t going to subject them to the... Recapturing Lost Youth Squad. Yolanda had three kids, for fuck’s sake.

He swallowed the remains of his cup and studied the bottom. “I wouldn’t say I resent it,” he said, surprisingly calm and serious for the moment. “That makes it seem like I’m out for vengeance on everyone or hate you all. I don’t, at all. I just want... I dunno.” His voice dropped to a mumble. “Respect, maybe? Or... something...” And now, because of his stupid choice to pretend to be something he wasn’t, some of them actually did respect him, but it wasn’t even him, not really. They respected a complete and total fabrication. He’d almost gotten what he wanted, but it felt hollow and fake.

from skylar murphy —

truth: when was the closest you came to truly getting upset with the squad’s jokes on your behalf?

dare: spread a rumor about someone in the squad that really grinds your gears (i.e. whoever pokes fun at you too much from your perspective).

“Uhhh...” He tried to think, this time, of something specific. After a minute, he nodded. “I do remember one time...” Which in hindsight, might’ve been a precursor to things to come, but he hadn’t been too wise about that sort of thing until he started actively looking for them at his therapist’s bidding. “After we saw the Arcade Fire concert in junior year, and everyone had bought merch. Remember, it was like, a status thing? Wearing the shirts the next day if you’d been to the show? Teenagers are trash.”

“Anyway, they were actually pretty tame as jokes go, just about the shirt and how I had finally made a decent fashion choice, combined with like... the occasional jab about how now I looked like all the other indie pricks at school.” It really had been totally run-of-the-mill day, all things told---except he’d actually loved that shirt, and the concert had been a good memory. And it’d only lasted a day, because of their idiotic taunts, and his skin being surprisingly thin that week. “Went home and burned the thing in the fireplace. Of course, our fireplace wasn’t equipped for synthetics or whatever was on the logo, I dunno... Anyway the house filled up with smoke and I had to evacuate the munchkins to the lawn,” he said, referring to his siblings. “And got in complete shit for it. Never told any of you, but I think that’s the most pissed I ever got.”

from tj powell —

truth: do you like leigh or salem better?

dare: run out into the hall, knock on somebody’s door, and ask to use their bathroom.

He toyed with his lower lip, looking directly at the dimly-aware Salem as he tried to decide. It should be an easy answer, but his drink had been spiked after all---with indecision and philosophizing, apparently, because it occurred to him that for all his resentment of Leigh becoming joined at the hip with Salem instead, there was something that wasn’t quite... It wasn’t jealousy, really, because he also liked Salem. Genuinely. If he’d been in her shoes, he’d have opted to hang out with Salem, too. So he didn’t really blame her, and that’s what made it complicated. Leigh was his oldest friend, probably. They understood each other, and she’d never cut him out---when she could have. They became a trio instead. He eventually realized he’d been silently musing and staring at Salem for quite some time, and shrugged. “Fuck it.” He got shakily to his feet and went out into the hall, made a show of being choosy about which hotel door he was going to disturb before selecting one at random and knocking.

And then knocking at another when the first didn’t answer. Finally, the door was jerked open. A tall man with a handlebar moustache to rival most cowboy movies loomed over him from the doorway. “What do you want.” He snapped.

Kai blinked. “Uh, I---I lost my room key---can I use your bathroom?”

The man stared at him---then down the hall, where he no doubt saw the heads of several onlookers. “No.”

The door slammed inches from Kai’s nose and blew his hair back with the force of it. He was happy to retreat with his indignity and the thought of ‘I’m twenty eight fucking years old, what am I doing’ echoing shamefully in his head, until he realized he had an ace up his sleeve---or on his hand, rather. He grinned down the hall at his friends, took the bandage off his right palm from the failed blood oath with Cleo, and knocked again.

The door opened. “Fuck off---”

“Please,” he implored, clutching his bloody hand. “I just need to wash off the blood, and then I’ll go...”

The man’s eyes widened. “Shit! Yeah, come on---I know first aid. How’d you manage that, son?”

Kai followed, face serious. Ten minutes later he came back to the room, freshly bandaged and more or less triumphant.

#thesquadtask #thesquadevent #finally!! finished the thing :)

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dahtwitchi · 5 years

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@alaricathecat sent an ask

You’re such an amazing artist! I’m sorry if you got this question 100x times already, but what media do you use to paint your pictures? I’ve been looking for a new media type, and it looks absolutely fun (and perhaps really difficult?) to use, but I’m nothing but stubborn if I do say so myself. Lmfao. Anyway, your art is stunning, I wish I could have art class with you, because I believe I could learn a lot from you

First of all: Thank you

I’m guessing you are talking about the most common style I’m using right now?Easiest way is to show, I guess, so I documented the process of my last drawing ^^ I’ll go into detail under the cut! (there should alsobe miscellanious things under the tag #how I art)

Basically, it’s bottled ink with a few touch ups. Everything but the glass of water is in the first image (coffee, very important, and KEEP IT ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF YOUR WATER to minimise risks of inking up your coffee!!), including the sketches I did of orcas in preparation for this piece. Always find ways to nag yourself into some sketch studies whenever you manage! I hadn’t drawn orcas before, so I just set a timer to 40 minutes and drew a few of the first images that came up when googling.

I use mechanical pencil for the sketch, a 2B 0.7 lead, which I get excess lead off of with a kneaded eraser. This help not to clog the tips of pens or brushes with all that excess, and the ink go on the paper not on top of the graphite. I rough line it with a thin waterproof ink pen (today that ended up being a 02 micron) and then use the kneaded eraser to remove the rest of the sketch. The kneaded eraser is worth gold! Get a good brand one, though, because there are some really crappy out there, and the brand ones I find don’t generally cost more in any case. They are supposed to be really soft and possible to drag out loooong very easily and quite fast. You might get stuck stretching it over and over and over and over- yeah.

Then I move on to the ink, and watercolours or gouache depending on what’s closest when I’m about to sit down. The brushes are the only thing I’ve bothered to get hold of high quality ones. I splurged with birthday money, and I’m weak they were so good! A single decent one that hold liquid well and don’t let go of it in great blobs was fine for quite a while, though.

Here come the trouble with my technique though, because what I use for paper is printer paper x’D Not the cheapest one, but step above, xerox big pack for colour print. The surface hold up surprisingly well, and I have also used it for markers as it doesn’t bleed through very fast. If can’t handle liquids well at all, though x’D Bubbling, people! The trick is, as little water as possible and let layers dry inbetween. A bit fiddly, but lower the cost a lot for these not high class artwork pieces. (also a lot of the low cost, but still far more expensive, watercolour papers actually handle water worse than these printer papers, sooo

The ink is thinned out with water, a can lid work excellently as colour cups! A dip into the ink, put it in the lid and add a some droplets of water. I use a clean moist brush, but let excess water bleed out from the brush onto toilet paper, then bring in the amount of watered down ink I want and apply. My different brushes need different ratios of water and ink in them to let go of the same amount of liquid and colour, so learn your brushes! The more expensive brushes are able to let go of practically all ink and practically none is wasted in the water glass, while the cheap brushes always have quite a bit of ink left in them despite not really letting go of more to the paper.

Then it’s layering time. But not too heavy layering, as the ink I use reactivate again. Making sure not to work the surface much, as it too easily crumbles. Oh. And getting distracted by how pretty ink in water is. Maybe dip the brush an extra time just to see the pretty swirls~

First few layers are all over, not that much confined to inside the lines. Help to create more depth and movement in the end. I try to shade the lighter areas first, as the darker colours will bleed when layering over them. The very darkest clear edges last, on perfectly dry paper, to ensure clean contrast lines.

The shading from dark to light, I make sure to have a dipping of water sucked up high up in the brush, then relatively dark ink. When you then go from dark to light, you’ll get less and less colour. The smoother a shade you want, the more important it is to work wet and not risk the paper suck up colour and end up with sharp edges where you don’t want them. Usually with liquids, you apply water first, then add in the colour in the wet area, but you can only do that with good (expeeeeensive) watercolour paper. So, here you have to work fast and confidently.

Or. You know. Get shades in ways you hadn’t planned, and either just make it all lots darker, or pretend it’s all fine. That’s a skill to learn, too! Very important one x’D

I use maybe… 2-5 dips into the ink in total for these pieces, so a bottle of ink really isn’t very expensive compared to what I get out of it.

When I’m happy with the ink, I add in touches of colour. Still with little water, and it will mix in with the ink. Gouache you can layer on top better, but I’m just accenting a bit, so solstice blue it was x3

Then we have the white el tip pen. That I have to stop myself from overusing completely x’D Outlining things like the weapon and dividing line between body and furthest fin to stand out more, added in on the eyes that was a tad bit too dark and adding shinies to body and such.

Lastly I go over with a ink pen again, or possible my smallest brush if I can be bothered, to just touch everything up.

And that’s it. With disturbances and cats and kiddo and all, it took about 1.5 h, preparations and digital after work (adjusting what the scanner killed, and tiny adjustments here and there, made his right pupil smaller as it was too big, for example) excluded.

I really like working the ink and the brushes. It got such life and soul, the medium give it’s own twist on what you try to make. I did get a grip on the ink thanks to inktober, where I at least 2/3 worked with the bottled ink to prompts, so that the point became making something with ink rather than forgetting your medium in favour for motif. Sketching and exercises and time limits, those are what have made me take the biggest steps in art. Making truly elaborate pieces have been about having a bit fun with the skills you have, but the journey of growing as an artist isn’t about those anymore for me. It’s surprisingly freeing, and the day you discover hard work on sketch exercises make you suddenly able to sketch a wide variety of things just like that? It’s complete awe ^^

#how i art #merman #Kakashi #Kakashi merman #orca #art wip #wip process #long post

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