It helps to be good with faces, as an assassin- killing the wrong person can be embarrassing for everyone involved. It is also an easy enough way to render myself invisible. 'Oh, why is that elf here? Portraits for the Lady? Of course'- and occasionally? I earn a coin or two.
[ Even if it had started as a way to not kill the wrong target- he's enjoyed it. Honed it on his own- all the better for putting charcoal to paper and starting up the long curves that make up the shadows of Dorian's current posture. ]
An excuse to stand and admire you? What is not to like.
I'd offer a coin or two myself, but then, I shouldn't like to deprive you of my portrait.
[ He isn't exactly lounging on a chaise now, a sort of conscious twinge that maybe he ought to be posing, or something, but Zevran has already started. Well, he's at least in a sort of poise, book in hand and by the window, so he relaxes, and looks back down at what he was barely reading.
Given time, a proper canvas, and some of the minerals that keep mysteriously appearing in packages meant for me I might perhaps do these again in color.
[ His hand moves over the paper, unhurried, eye flicking up to Dorian to gauge the line of his shoulders, the bend of his torso- the broad strokes before he flitted to the finer details. Shadows would wait until he had the bulk of it sorted out. ]
There is an old tale told by Antivan fish-wives about souls and portraits, something of how a skilled artist twists the souls of those he paints and steals them for his own use. His paintings were so alive, so real that of course this had to be the case, yes? A fine fiction. And then you learn that no, roughly a century ago there was a melificar Crow that did more or less just that from one of the other Houses.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ Even if it had started as a way to not kill the wrong target- he's enjoyed it. Honed it on his own- all the better for putting charcoal to paper and starting up the long curves that make up the shadows of Dorian's current posture. ]
An excuse to stand and admire you? What is not to like.
no subject
[ He isn't exactly lounging on a chaise now, a sort of conscious twinge that maybe he ought to be posing, or something, but Zevran has already started. Well, he's at least in a sort of poise, book in hand and by the window, so he relaxes, and looks back down at what he was barely reading.
He turns a page, backwards, momentarily lost. ]
But I'll take a picture in lieu of your soul.
no subject
[ His hand moves over the paper, unhurried, eye flicking up to Dorian to gauge the line of his shoulders, the bend of his torso- the broad strokes before he flitted to the finer details. Shadows would wait until he had the bulk of it sorted out. ]
There is an old tale told by Antivan fish-wives about souls and portraits, something of how a skilled artist twists the souls of those he paints and steals them for his own use. His paintings were so alive, so real that of course this had to be the case, yes? A fine fiction. And then you learn that no, roughly a century ago there was a melificar Crow that did more or less just that from one of the other Houses.