Shaky Hands

"A lot more goes into painting than just the composition and the subject. The style is also extremely important. Different styles communicate different intentions on how the work is to be looked at.

If a style is looser and more unrealistic, exaggerating certain features, the work is to be looked at different from more traditional art styles where everything is much more realistic. The different styles are not to be looked at as one being inferior, and the other superior, by virtue of the shapes involved within them, but are to be evaluated, side by side, with what the contributes to the work, to be judged particularly

Colours are very much important as well.

There are not any coloured inks on sale here, in this area, available to us as common people, with only those of the manor capable of affording to buy and then have delivered such items. The absence of colour may indicate a blankness: a surface ready for colour and to be filled with more, a deep yearning conveyed by the desolation. Moreover, the sheer contrast between what it black and what is white may be used to illustrate a dichotomy present in the work, or the intentions of grander, loftier goals.

The way the blank spaces are filled on the page are also important as they are used to indicate the texture of the work. The materials depicted on the drawing may be used to make a statement as a crane standing in the river made out of flesh, is different from a crane standing in the river made out of sticks.

There is a lot that goes into drawings to communicate specific beliefs and ideals, whether those ideas are love, admiration, contempt, gratitude, excitement, or even hatred.

But at the end of the day, no matter how much talent one has, the key to improving at drawing is practice. One can develop quicker than others, while others can develop slower. It takes time to understand how to draw, how to place creatures on the page, human beings, plants, homes, and food.

There will be stumbles on the road. On some days, you may not even want to pick up a brush, and on other days, you may find yourself too enthusiastic with it, quickly running through all your energy and leaving your hands sore and without any more paper.

Blisters may form. Sores will develop. The aching of the limbs and back will occur, but as long as you keep on going, you will succeed, or at least die trying.

To pick a pursuit in life and to dedicate oneself to it has been the way that I have coped so far. I had chosen my poison, deciding to take care of my younger sisters, and then my wife when I got married. I wanted most of all to take care of all my relatives younger than me, providing them stable employment and an opportunity to work their own passions as seamstresses, pottery makers, weavers, poets, culinary experts , embroiders, carpenters, and artists.

I kept all the works of my youngest sibling, my youngest sister, within the pages of my reports, to give me a smile every single time I was forced to look over all my work, and to provide joy to others, if they happened to stumble upon one of her pieces.

You can see her now, look. She is down at the building closest to the entrance of the underworld, the little temple there. She prays there for all our other siblings who have already passed on and into the reincarnation cycle.

You probably are curious, after all your investigations, why the town is in such a state.

Four years ago, there was a plague that swept through the town. It was indiscriminate in who it took from us all, snatching away both the young and the old equally, taking particular delight in snatching away the young men, leaving the newly married women widows, sometimes on their wedding nights.

One man decided to journey to the Moon Temple to speak with the monks on what should be done to appease the God or malignant spirit that had brought this cruelty down upon us all.

We wanted the plague to stop killing those of the town.

When he returned, he was completely silent. He did not speak a single word, his voice seemingly vanished on his trip.

He stripped his body of his clothing, including the ribbon holding up his hair and boots, before throwing himself into the lake, as if he were a mad man.

His mother screamed and cried, begging her young, healthy grandson to rescue his father from the apparent insanity that had gripped her son's mind and had held it hostage.

She kneeled there, at the edge of the lake, wailing at the fate of her son, begging for him to be brought back to shore and her arms.

It was no use as her son had died on that day, drowning at the bottom of the lake.

Some of the men swam down to try and retrieve his body, perturbed at his suicide and then the fact that his naked body had not surfaced, as all drowning victims do once deceased.

His skeleton was the only remaining trace of the boy, now transformed into stone, weighted down at the bottom of the lake and impossible to move.

They swam back to the surface and reported their findings with the lord of the mansion declaring that he, himself, would make the journey to the Moon Temple the following day to demand both an explanation for the poor man's death, and a solution to the plague.

That night, everyone in the town passed in their sleep. Even those awake, forced into the land of wakefulness by candlelight, found themselves falling unconscious at their work desks and passing away peacefully.

The method of the Moon Temple had worked.

The plague had stopped and nobody else from the village would have to die from it ever again.

The town's wishes had been fulfilled."