InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Dance dance."

Susan Amelia Bones (susanamybones) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-08-28 13:57:00

Entry tags:

character: dean thomas, character: susan bones

RP: joie de vivre
Who: Susan and Dean

What: Enforced happiness

Where: Paris

When: Friday 28th of August, early afternoon

Rating: SFW

Susan had had a particularly trying morning. Dean had turned up at her house, still clutching a mug of tea - which she had been forced to more or less wrestle from him. She'd then explained, much to her (very well hidden) disappointment that Seamus wouldn't be joining them until later on in the weekend. She had however stressed that they would definitely have fun, and that she'd drawn up some activities.

Then, at precisely 9:23, she'd told him to grab onto the candle holder portkey which she'd secured them, and after the familiar jerking feeling behind their navels, they'd ended up in the apartment she'd inherited from her great-aunt. Then, once they'd stowed their things in the apartment Susan had taken Dean shopping for clothes with a single-minded intensity that had no-doubt set his teeth on edge. She had enjoyed taking him through the various chic little boutiques, and watching him deal with the peculiarly French way that the clothes were chosen - measurements were magically taken, and clothing once chosen was altered to fit within moments. She'd also treated him to lunch, and a rather staggering amount of cakes and pastries at a café she knew.

Now however, they were standing in the magical (and thus hidden) section of the Louvre, and Susan was smiling brightly at the look on Dean's face as they slowly moved their way through the moving masterpieces. "Well," she asked archly, after they'd spent nearly ten minutes in wrapt silence. "What do you think of this bit?"

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artistdean
2015-09-07 10:57 pm UTC (link)

Dean frowned at the painting they were standing in front of for a second before shaking his head and grabbing her wrist, and jerking his head across the room, where they'd already looked at the paintings. "C'mon, I can do it easier with this one," he said, tugging gently so she'd follow him before navigating his way between the other visitors.

He came to rest in front of a painting of something akin to the Hudson River School style, with a scene not unlike Van Gogh's Starry Night, that he was rather fond of and thus knew a lot of the details about without needing to look them up. "Ok, so you know a bit from me going through it how the apprenticeship process works. Each individual artist studies with one or occasionally two masters and learns the techniques they know for making paints, preparing canvases, the way the final spells are cast and so on. To an extent they also learn specific brush or knife techniques during an apprenticeship, but those tend to be a little less obvious because people usually really develop what they like to do over time, but most of the base techniques they learn as an apprentice change very little. Sure some people who are particularly good at potions will improve certain aspects but that sort of thing changes at a much slower pace and you can track it," he explains, hands moving rapidly as he spoke.

"So, if you look here, at how the sky moves, or rather how the moon tracks across the sky. You can't really stand here long enough to watch the stars because they move in time with the changing of the year, but you can see the moon moving just about, and the sky colour changing, and the shadows changing with it," he said, gesturing to the light and shadows on the plants at the base of the scene. "Well I know that it was this artist who finally managed to fix on a technique which allowed the paint to change so smoothly between colours over such a long period of time. She was a complete genius - invented a masking technique that's still in use today - but what you can track is how her paint base for the colour changing technique was spread. It's probably one of the easiest sorts of things to track for someone who doesn't have in depth knowledge of the painting process. Before she perfected the technique colours change jerkily from one to the next, and that can still be useful depending on what effect you're looking for, but the smoothness is more usual. So you don't see it before her, but she has two well known apprentices who learned the technique, and we also know she gave the recipe to a contemporary of hers who is suspected to be her lover," he said. "Only one of his apprentices displays the technique though because the one had finished his apprenticeship before she passed the recipe on. I think they didn't stay close either because it's the sort of thing even an apprentice finished their training might be favoured with by a master.

"See the painting over there?" he said, pointing to one on the adjacent wall, not far from them. "That's by someone who apprenticed to one of her apprentices. And the witch in the flamenco-style dress with colours swirling around her as she dances that we saw in the other room? You can trace the artist's apprenticeship line back to the supposed lover." He occasionally paused think of appropriate works, or try and spot them in the room. "But, that painting," he gestured to the one to the right of them, "was painted about thirty years or so after this one, but see how the colour changes are still jerky? That's because the artist had no contact with this one. If I remember correctly it took the better part of a hundred and twenty years for the technique to be passed around via apprenticeships and favours so that it was universally known. And for the first fifty years or so you can track how it was passed around pretty easily if you know your art history." Dean had had to study a certain amount of this and the most influential artists and their apprenticeship lines as part of his own apprenticeship.

"There are some techniques which got lost because the artists refused to share them, or their apprentices never got to a point of taking apprentices of their own," he added with a shrug.

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susanamybones
2015-09-24 09:19 pm UTC (link)

Susan grinned and allowed herself to be tugged across the room, grinning as Dean launched into one of the longest stretches of impassioned speaking she'd seen him give in years. She looked at the painting, and smiled at the title, which had been helpfully translated as 'a study in pulchritudinous wonder.' She nodded along as he explained, stepping in when he took a breath. "This is by Lucretia Approfondire da Venezia, right," she asked. "I remember learning about her from my great-grandmother. She sounds just the sort of delightful sort who'd reveal painting tips in between the sheets."

She nodded thoughtfully as he explained the situation. "That sounds like the way new spells move slowly between duelling clubs. Expelliarmus took the better part of forty years to become universally known." She made a wry face at his final comment and nodded. "One of my lecturers during training used to lament that the unforgivables may even have had counter-curses. It seems greedy to not pass things onto others. I get why people would do it, but if you event something magical - pardon the pun - then shouldn't you want to make sure it spreads? A little bit more beauty being fixed into the world and all that?"

"So, what else strikes you in this room then? Show me some more masters, maestro."

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artistdean
2015-09-27 10:38 pm UTC (link)

He nodded. "Yep, that's her. She was one of the artists I had to study a little for my apprenticeship, for obvious reasons since she managed this advancement. She was a bit scandalous all around really. Making a living from art as a woman at that time, didn't keep her lovers especially quiet, and painted her own nude form too if I remember correctly, which was a big no-no as a woman." He was really rather fond of her style and the swath she'd cut through the art world.

He hadn't heard about that aspect of spell dispersal, but he supposed it made sense. "Ah, but you forget the importance of tradition, and the fact we artists are a band of bloody perfectionists who maybe don't want to give anything away just in case they might improve it. That or we're not on good terms with the people who might find it useful and just spitefully don't want to tell them," he admitted.

Looking around the room Dean's eyes passed from one painting to another. Some of them they had already looked at, others he'd been distracted from by Susan's question and his own enthusiastic reply. He was chewing absently at his lip. He rarely noticed he was doing it but it often happened when he was nervous or thinking. This time it was definitely the latter. Something caught his eye and he couldn't parse it immediately, and he looked at the paintings to either side of the archway to the next room, shaking his head slightly at each. Then he caught the movement again and his breath caught. He'd forgotten they had one. He moved automatically towards what he had seen, wonder written large across his face as he moved in a daze until he was standing in front of the piece. It was small and the colours were somewhat dull, but it still garnered attention. Still the dominant piece on that wall. All for the simple reason it had three distinct layers.

As Dean watched it change from one to the next he felt a frisson of energy shoot up his spine. He'd never seen one outside of a book. He knew they were rare. Isolated pieces created by a scattering of artists, some of whose names, like this one, had been lost to history. He hadn't checked to see Susan was still following since he'd dropped her hand, too enthralled by the painting. Too enthralled to do more than jump slightly when a tall wizard brushed past his back unexpectedly, an unpleasant shiver passing through him this time.

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