semi-open post: portraiture

[peaklordshen]

After shifting his way through oil pastels, watercolors, house paint, colored pencils, and an endless variety of paint markers, Shen Yuan has finally managed to get the Mansion to produce a decent set of oil paints, and—wonder of wonders—an easel. He's set up in a spacious, well-lit hall, probably for dancing or salons or whatever, where he's arranged a bunch of furniture in various configurations—wooden screens that he's draped cloth¹ over for backdrops; armchairs stolen from the lounge, wooden stools and high-backed dining chairs from the kitchens; even a lovely chaise lounge in a deep purple that he wistfully thinks he won't actually use, because it would definitely be for Aleksander, and he doubts he'll be doing that entry in his protagonists of the Mansion series after all. He has one of the stools pulled up next to the easel to hold his paints, and is wearing a wide-necked sweater over a black turtleneck and some loose, worn jeans that already have a few flecks of paint on them from when he was doing his color tests.² He's pulled his hair back in a practical bun, and he's currently laying down a layer of gesso on his canvas.

¹ Look, he has to do something with all of those robes he accidentally conjured in his last post.
² After days of feeling very lost and confused about how he's not required to LARP anymore, he's pretty much decided that it actually means he can just change who he's LARPing as at will, and the main way to do this is through fashion. Today he is An Artist.

[Primarily for those Shen Yuan has offered to paint, but anyone else is also welcome to come bother him while he works.]

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods, a small and fervent nod.

(He's been thinking, for a slow and steady while, about concupiscience, about the sin of sensuality -- thinking of what it means, to long to be beautiful, to wear beautiful things and eat things that are good, to desire and to want to be desired. The robe is silk and silk is cool and good to touch, pleasant to stroke against his skin. Saint Augustine has written that concupiscience could be present even in a world where Adam never fell: that desire is only a failing in the context of the worst desire, which led to all men being born in sin. If that's true, then perhaps it isn't wrong, in and of itself, to be sensual. All of that has led him here, in front of Shen Yuan, feeling the light touch his bare skin between the folds of the robe, carefully clipping the pearls into the lobes of his ears.)

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods back, and sets the crown of myrtle on Galahad's head, turning it to suit him best like he had the flowers in the greenhouse when they'd first figured out how to talk without words. He's glad they have a new way, now—he can sign beautiful, happy to Galahad without breaking his pleased and wondering silence—but he's glad they have that first language, too, glad to know, when he steps back to look at his friend, that he's seeing Galahad crowned in love.

Ah, he's becoming such a sap in his old age!! He has to turn away, back to his canvas, so Galahad won't see him tearing up. He busies himself with deciding how to stage him, then remembers: G-flower-choice. He turns back around to gesture at all the furniture and repeat that last sign—choice, as in, you choose.

[onthewillowsthere]

He smiles at Shen Yuan and picks a wooden stool. He sits in his usual straight-backed way, looking at Shen Yuan. "Like this?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan hums, narrowing his eyes. "If you like," he says, slowly. "That's—a contrast, with the rest of the styling. Effective, but—I think it depends on how you want this to be read." He pulls an armchair over next to Galahad. "On the stool, it's like you're—daring the viewer. You're arrayed so beautifully, in soft, rich things, but you hold yourself in a way that's—unwelcoming to touch. Like someone would have to be very brave, and very presumptuous to do it, but you know how much they want to, and you're challenging them to weigh their desires versus the implied danger of acting on them." He gestures to the armchair, sumptuous and velvety-gold. "The armchair is more in line with how you're dressed. If you want, I can help you give off—different vibes. Inviting, rather than challenging. It's up to you."

He's a little surprised at himself for all of this—it's not like he's actually done portraiture before. But he's realizing it's exactly how he used to write requests when he solicited commissions of Binghe—color, pose, mood, contrast; exactly what kind of sensuality he wanted from them. He shakes his head at himself—yet another straight behavior revealed as gay fraud. What kind of straight man commissioned multiple very specifically sensual paintings of other men?

[onthewillowsthere]

If the portrait were for Claudius, he half thinks it would be right for it to be a challenge, because Claudius is both brave and presumptuous and it would amuse him. But this is something Galahad wants for himself, and he wants people to want to touch him. So he nods, and stands again -- looks to one of the plush armchairs and tilts his head at Shen Yuan: this one?

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods. "Sit, and I'll arrange you."

[onthewillowsthere]

He sits, still very straight, but pliant, ready to be arranged.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan smiles at him, fond. "Relax," he says, touching Galahad's shoulders. "Lean back. Remember how you felt when we vaped—when we used that herb together? The looseness of that." He arranges him so he's a leaning a little bit sideways in the chair, one of his arms propped on its arm, his other loose in his lap. Legs crossed at the ankles. It inevitably looks artful, rather than casual—Galahad just has that carriage to him—but it's an inviting kind of artful. He touches his chin a few times, turning him this way and that, but nothing looks like Galahad unless he's looking directly ahead, eyes lit up blazing and blue in the slanting light.

Finally he reaches up and plucks just one of the myrtle blossoms from the crown and places it between the fingers of Galahad's burned hand. "Alright?" he asks, pulling back a little.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods, and does his best to relax, to hold himself more the way he would if Magnus or Shen Yuan were cuddled against him -- he tries to remember the ease he felt when Shen Yuan gave him the herbal remedy, how everything was light and he couldn't stop smiling and laughing. He does, at least, look less imposing.

[peaklordshen]

Galahad, once he's settled, is kind of an ideal portrait model. He just sits, perfectly still; he doesn't fidget, or ask questions, or even really look bored. He just—is. Usually what Shen Yuan likes about painting verses photography is the sense of gesture; you're not, necessarily, painting all of what someone looks like down to the last detail, but you're capturing something, a moment, or a composite of several, in a line of moments, as someone moves between poses or emotions. But he finds himself wishing he had a camera, rather than a brush, for this; he wants every detail of this stillness, not least because it's so different from Galahad's usual stillness—it's not wary, or reserved; he's waiting, and waiting, specifically, to be touched. He wants to capture that; the implication, caught somewhere in Galahad's gaze, that as the viewer your touch has the power to make him move, and breathe, and laugh, and sigh.

He's so still and silent for so long that Shen Yuan gets a little concerned, actually. "You okay?" He calls over to him from the easel. "Do you need, like, a snack? Something to drink?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He blinks, looking a little like a sleeper come awake. "I'm all right." And then, because he's comfortable with Shen Yuan and he thinks Shen Yuan likes it when he explains his thoughts a bit more, he adds, "It's like a vigil. I'm good at vigils."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan frowns, a little. "Isn't that sad, though? I thought vigils were for when someone has died." Like waiting with mourners and burning money for the dead.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Some are. All vigils are prayers. When I became a knight I stayed up all night in the chapel."

[peaklordshen]

"Do you still pray?" Shen Yuan asks, purely curious.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. I keep the hours, and Sunday mass."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods, not surprised, carving out the shapes of Galahad's shoulders, his knees. "What do you say? In your prayers? Or is it just recitation, the same words every time?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Recitation. --I add my own intercessions." He's continuing to sit perfectly still as he answers Shen Yuan's questions.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan is having the worst time finding the right blue for his eyes. Maybe it's not right, to ask him about God when he's trying to embody desire, or at least openness to desire. Or maybe he doesn't mind, maybe it's nice. "Does it make you lonely, that fewer people here pray to your God?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad blinks, which is his face's only concession to confusion. "I was always lonely."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan huffs, feeling a pang of sympathy so deep it almost manifests as laughter. "Sorry, right, stupid question."

[onthewillowsthere]

"No, it wasn't." He keeps looking straight ahead at Shen Yuan. "I like keeping the hours. It's for me, not God."

[peaklordshen]

"Good," says Shen Yuan, heartfelt. "If it was for him, he wouldn't deserve it."

[onthewillowsthere]

He doesn't entirely know what to say to that, so he says nothing, but after a while: "Are you well?"

[peaklordshen]

"Halfway to deciding that oil paints are the wrong medium entirely and I need to switch to acrylics or watercolors to ever actually capture the luminous quality of your eyes," grumbles Shen Yuan, "but I know that's not what you meant. I am well. The zombies last week were a surprise, but it was kind of nice to stretch my combat muscles a little."

[onthewillowsthere]

"You weren't hurt?"