Three Twisted Knots

Because I’ve been hiding so much lately, I have been doing a lot of sketching. There’s so much going on, so many horrible things have just happened or may be happening or may be about to happen that I can’t keep it all straight, and I know I’ve said that before. So here are some of the sketches I’ve done lately.

Sometimes, I do a lot of different studies before I’m happy with a sketch. This one on the left is a sketch of Nathaniel and me. I love the way he looks at me, but trying to capture that is hard.

So I do different studies, try to work in different media, a softer pencil, more smudging, blurred outlines. I change the angle, the background, the alignment.

Sometimes what I try doesn’t work; sometimes it does. I think I am getting better at sketching people, but I’m working in a vacuum here, as I don’t show these to many people. I don’t think Nathaniel has seen any of the drawings I’ve done of him. Often I start with one concept, then make alternative sketches from the original sketch, which is what I’ve done here. And sometimes they just convey different moods. I’ll most likely never be able to capture the look in Nathaniel’s eyes when he looks at me, but I think the closest I’ve come so far is the black and white charcoal sketch on the right, there.

Since the one thing I do have access to that I used to draw from Before is a mirror, I do a lot of self portraits. It’s not just because I’m a vain little bitch.

I also tend to draw what I know best. It takes several studies and some trial and error to get something new right — you don’t want to know how many crumpled up studies there were of the fucking bridge troll, for example. But I can draw Aoibh, Nathaniel, me, Blaise, and a few others straight from memory and put us anywhere.

I’m sure I’ve done more drawings of the three of us than I have of anything else in my sketchbook / journal combined. And I don’t mind. I love drawing them, and they belong with me, so I draw me. My beautiful friends.

One of the things I really wanted to do was go back and sketch those photographs that appeared like magic and fell out of my journal that day, because, as predicted, the photos themselves began to disintegrate almost immediately. Some of them looked like they’d been printed years ago, and it didn’t help that the edges were already fraying when I pinned them up to copy them, and the light from the sithen seemed to make them turn to ashes even faster. In the end, I was not able to do all of them, so I picked my favourites and did those first.

I almost didn’t sketch this one, but then I really liked how his hair looked so Anime in the picture. No one has to know that he’s kicking my arse here. Well, except that I just told you.

Fenella was so angry we didn’t get her to photograph our first kiss she made us pose for this one.

We probably spent way too much time sitting on this bench. It was a cool bench.

This last one to the left is the impossible one, the one I don’t even remember Fen taking. The one that can only have been taken perhaps two hours before the accident happened. Looking at these makes me wonder where Richard is now, what he’s doing, if he’s over me, if time forked and he’s still with some version of me, if he’s happy. I hope he’s happy, wherever he is. And I hope he isn’t as full of questions as I am when he thinks of me. If he thinks of me.

This is a sketch of me kissing Nathaniel while Valene holds him and nuzzles against both of us. I haven’t talked very much about this, because I don’t know how to talk about it. But there is nowhere I would rather be than with these beautiful people. Nowhere do I feel more secure and loved. Richard, wherever he is, would not know me now. He’d not recognise me. I’m another girl, in another world, and the world is made of love.