Monday May 18th, 2015

The exercise:

Write about: the commission.

I was colouring with Max on the deck this afternoon when the following conversation took place:

Mine:

"What do you want me to draw?" I asked, blue crayon in hand.

"Umm... a crab."

"A crab?"

"Two crabs!"

I should have known better than to ask.

"Okay, two crabs," I said, switching to a red crayon.

"Two crabs fixing the wood on the wall."

"Okay... two crabs. Fixing the wood. On the wall."

"With tools!"

"Two crabs fixing the wood on the wall with tools?"

"Yeah!"

There wasn't much else to say at that point, so I got to work. I am pretty crap terrible at drawing, by the way. But I'm making an effort to both tell Max that and to make sure he knows that it doesn't matter - drawing doesn't have to be good, it can just be fun.

But for the record? The end result of this particular effort was awful.

That's okay though. Because Max thought it was great.

Also: a little while later, after we had doodled several other things, he brought his attention back to this particular drawing and announced that the two crabs needed a toolbox. So I drew them one.

I think it really brought the whole thing together quite nicely.

4 comments:

Greg said...

I think you should have shared your picture with us, so we could judge your artistic talent for ourselves! I'd have enjoyed seeing two crabs with tools and a toolbox, and I'm sure everyone else would too :) Still, I like the fact that you take commissions for your art, and I'll have a think about what I'd like to commission you to draw.

The commission
The boardroom was panelled in Swedish wood that had turned beige under the high-intensity Finnish halogen lights. The carpets were once a deep, French blue, but the Italian cleaning crew had used Polish cleaning products and managed to turn patches of it green, so that it looked like the surface of a lake stained by algae. The Belgian desks had been installed by Czech contractors and wobbled alarmingly, but the Swiss maintenance crew had nailed some Spanish oak to the edges to make sure that nothing ever fell off. There was a sub-commission tasked with finding out where the nails had come from and making sure that they were from a European member state.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Commission" said Auditor Margaine, standing up in front of the Commission. "I hope you have all found time to read the report on the Benthic Treaty, as we will be voting on how to proceed at the end of this session." A hand raised from the seats around the table, and Margaine suppressed a sigh. "Yes, Piedro?"
"I could not read it," said Piedro, a middle-aged man with cotton-wool hair and a belly that would have shamed Santa. "It was in some foreign language."
"Esperanto," said Margaine. "As is required by commission rules, and which you've sworn you speak and read."
"I must have left my reading glasses at home," said Piedro smoothly.
"And you could have had it translated by our extremely expensive translation service," said Margaine tapping the report on the desk in front of her. The desk wobbled and somehow contrived to tip the report on to the floor.
"Yes, yes." Piedro waved a hand. "I shall listen to the discussion, I am sure it will tell me which way to vote."
"Did anyone manage to read the report?" asked Margaine, a suspicion itching at the back of her mind. Amidst much coughing and shuffling of chairs the room admitted that no-one had.
"Fine, then let's proceed to the vote," she said. "All in favour of admitting Ambassador Cthulhu to our meetings, please say aye."
The vote passed unanimously, and the commission deconvened.

David said...

“Draw for me,” Sarah said.

She was not the first girl to ask, and she would not be the last. She was the first blonde. And the first I met at the grocery store.

“I am an artist,” I had told her.

I tell everyone.

“Hi, I am an artist, my name is Brad.”

Or

“Hi, I’m Brad, I am an artist.”

I never know which way is more polite. Perhaps it does not matter as the response is always the same.

“Draw for me.”

I do. On a napkin or a paper bag, whatever canvas can be obtained at the moment.

When they take my commissioned work, the result is always the same: a wrinkled nose, a half smile, a polite “thank you.”

Then they walk away, stuffing the artwork in their pocket, unable to comprehend the elegant beauty of a stick figure with humongous breasts.

Anonymous said...

Marc, you've painted such an adorable picture of you and Max. I agree with Greg, I would like to see this masterpiece of yours.

I started working with characters from an idea of mine again. I apologize if I ended up straying a little too far from the prompt.

The Commission:

Walking thought the streets of Trianta seemed a completely different experience after my visit with the new Captain. My mind was racing with all the possibilities behind the food shortages. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as a rogue thief feeding his band of misfits at the people of Woodbloom’s expense.
But I was also told that I would be doing this assignment with the famous Iridian. I would finally get to know the identity of the one Seeker that every female criminal would not stop talking about. Even though I was excited to finally meet another Seeker, I was also apprehensive. Just thinking about how important this mission to Woodbloom was, important enough for the Captain to assign two of us to travel all the way to the northern border, was enough to make my hands quiver.
I started to mentally make a list of everything I would need for this trip when someone stopped right before me, causing me to walk straight into their back.
“My apologies,” I muttered as I tried to get past him.
“You? Apologizing to me?” Journey turned and gave me that one-sided grin of his, those long thieving arms crossed in front of his chest like a coat of arms. “Never in my mind would I expect to fine the great Verity being so humble as to treat me with common courtesy.”
“There’s no common courtesy allotted to a Prince of Thieves, Journey. Let me pass.”
He just stood there grinning, letting everyone else in the market space file on by. The large man that he was, I had no hope of moving him than I did a merchant’s cart.
I threw my hands into the air. “What on earth do you want? I don’t have time for your games.”
He cocked his head to his left. “I would imagine so, what with the Woodbloom food shortages and all that.”
My eyes must have widened or my jaw dropped before my training kicked in. That, or I had a tell that only someone of his caliber could detect. At any rate, his let lose a throaty chuckle. “Verity, Verity. If I truly am the Prince of Thieves as you’ve been saying, why wouldn’t I know of a heist of this size in Woodbloom. I might operate in the capital, but I by no means only have eyes, ears, or mouths within Trianda’s walls.”

Marc said...

Greg - No.

Also: Max ended up drawing over most of it later on anyway.

That's a very... European boardroom. And, I fear, it seems to be filled with dangerously incompetent people!

David - ah, good to hear from you again, as always.

And thank you for the laugh your final line provided me :D

Ivy - no apologies are ever required for straying from the prompt. I'm just always pleased that my prompt had something to do with the writing being shared :)

That's a fantastic scene, one brought to life with wonderful details. I can picture it easily, and the story that unfolds there feels like a small slice of a much larger pie.

A much larger, delicious pie.

That I want to eat.

I may have gotten off track there a bit myself...