Skin Wars

[James Baxter]

The art studio was not a place that James often found himself working. Usually it was at Tori's photography studio or in the comfort of his apartment. But when inspiration struck, he wasn't anywhere near those places. So the studio would have to do, as it had before he moved out of the dorms. The ideas that rummaged through his head were not class-based, not for a photo project or to even extend his photo portfolio, but rather his own imagination offered him a project that he was interested in exploring in his down time. Being an insomniac, he had his fair amount of time to work on things, but late at night it was harder to find help the way he would need.

With pictures he'd taken around Montana, a few he'd taken when he visited New York just a few months ago, and some he'd had given to him from a vacation his mother took in Europe, James' formulated an idea for his side work. Body painting. It wasn't well-known that he was a body painter, mainly because he had kept it to painting just a few people that he came across who were interested or people he was close to. He didn't do it often and he didn't put it out there for the world to see because it was mainly just for him. A way to deal with the insanity of his hallucinations.

Once he sprawled the pictures out, he drew inspiration from them. In each photo he picked out each of the unique elements that made them different and he did quick sketches of them all put together. He wanted to do what would almost be considered a camouflage, but without a backdrop that was real. It would be his own take on each place and the things that he found the most interesting in each of them. James had began to sketch out how it would fall onto a human body when he heard the door to the studio open. He lifted his eyes up to see who else had the idea to use the open studio for work. 

To be honest, he probably looked like a mad man with the papers strewn everywhere, charcoal smeared on his cheek and forehead and his hair sticking up in odd ways around his head, but James had never been one to care about those things.

[Shaan C. Vladislav]

everyone's watching through your eyes

She was dead. Her eyes glassed over and the dark circled under them abundant. Physically she was alive but her mind was fried, she had skipped sleeping last night, skipped her classes even. Torn canvases laid around her, some finished and some not. It was all just one giant mess in her little room, she hadn't come out to eat all day and she was simply drained from it. She had woken up the previous day and was simply put in a depleted state. She didn't remember her dreams at all, but she remember a snippit of this one, it had been about her mother.

So in her own logic she spent the day the way she had so many others, she went to her classes yesterday and today, she locked herself away. A rare attire for her today, a white baggy tanktop that let her bare back and sides show, and a pair of black cutoff shorts. It was the least clothing she had ever been seen in, often preferring to bundle into several layers, skin was sin and all that. Her pale flesh a portrait of scars and smeared paint of all colors. Though the most tragic part, she had run out of Red.

She quickly shoved her brushes, pencils and paints into a duffle bag and grabbed a roll of paper, it would do since a canvas was hard to lug around.she tired a red flannel around her hips and pulled on her combat boots and shoved her way out the door. She sprinted to the art studio on campus, her chest burning and heaving. She was never the running type and frankly, doing it was proving to be a mistake. Though she pushed on, she shoved her way into the door of the art room studio, figuring it would be abandoned.

Well imagine the shock on her puppy eyed face when she saw a man there, working it seemed from the coal on his face and the pictures strewn about. Her face flushed a dark crimson and she opened her mouth to begin an apology for intruding, but her eyes caught what she was looking for, a simple tube of red paint. "I.. am uh.. I'm sorry, I didnt think..." Her voice came out small and meek, she had hardly spoken in two days and it was a bit odd for her to be mouthing out an apology. Even odder or, funnier depending how you see it, was that all the while she was slowly inching her way by sidestepping to that paint tube.

429 wORDS ✖ James Baxter ✖  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

CODED BY REM OF WW

[James Baxter]

James looked over the girl who had crept her way into the art room. She was small, frail looking. Her hair was platinum and her eyes bigger than what he would have expected to look into. He definitely didn't recognize her from anywhere. She clearly was just as surprised to see him when she looked up as he was to see her, and she looked like she was ready to bolt at any minute. Part of him even wondered if she was real. Could there be such a timid, quiet creature like this? He noticed her slow movement and all he could do was arch an eyebrow curiously. Where was she headed to that she was trying to seem so inconspicuous?

His eyes followed where hers had darted to and it dawned on him, causing him to snort a laugh out. He covered it with a cough and rubbed the back of his neck before shaking his head and looking back up. "It's okay. I'm not usually in here this late. Did you need help with something? Like finding something?" Obviously she already knew what she was looking for and had found exactly where it was, but still, he found himself asking regardless. Wasn't it like, the polite thing to do? James couldn't be sure, didn't honestly care either, he just didn't see a point in staring at her while she stared back at him silently. It was awkward even for him.

((Sorry it's so short >.<))

[Shaan C. Vladislav]

The girls gaze froze on him like a deer looking to headlights. She made a further inch for the paint and let her fingers snatch thr tube from where it sat. "N-no.. i just...needed more paint and a...quiet place.. I.. Wont bother you." She stopped her inching and moved to set up one of the easels to work on, her gaze constantly snapping back to him. She chewed at her lower lip and mused if she should even stay there.

"I..havent seen you before...do you go to the collage?" She asked more to fill tue awkward silence that her entering the room had created, from her nervousness a little bit of her russian accent slipped through, coating each word in both a gentle but sharp cadence. Her eyes moved to her blank paper as she picked up a brush. She decided on this one being a red theme, and what better than red riding hood.

She began to lay the scene out, red riding standing on an unsprung bear trap, her face holding a bemused grin as the wolves circles around her, the telltale signs of a deadfall trap placed around the girl. She liked the contrast it made, she worked painting stroke after stroke with herbrush as she looked up, noticing the photographs. "Did...you take those? They're quite nice.."