~Paint me~
Kyle was not in the habit of asking questions when it came to things Cohen asked him to do. Make pamphlets? Sure. Cut tickets? Fine. Learn mandolin for a show that’s in a week? Done.
This, however - this was out of his range.
"I am not an artist," he’d said to himself a week prior, carrying multiple books on impressionism and realism and any other painting-book he could possibly get his hands on. He spent an inordinate amount of time making sure that if nothing else he would posess the technical skill to do as he was asked; even if he wasn’t a painter (and he really, truly wasn’t) he still had no intention of going about this half-assed. Because, well. That’d just be rude.
With that said…the whole “artist” thing really doesn’t look good on him. He’s too much of a perfectionist, he figures; a musical piece, after all, can certainly be perfect. If you don’t make a mistake, then it’s perfect, and then you can move onto the next one. Really there’s something very mathmatical about music, something quantitative and comforting not unlike a security blanket.
But art? Art is subjective - messy and chaotic. He hates how rigid his hands are; they’re never like this when he performs. Why, then, can’t he make them properly hold a brush? Also, he hates being watched; painting that bowl of fruit last Monday had been one thing, and he’d completed the task as succesfully as one rightfully could, but fruit didn’t look at you with that expression that seemed to say fuck this up and you’re out of a job. Perhaps that was just projection; still, it makes it hard for him to keep his hands from shaking. And that really wouldn’t do either, would it? Lord; just the idea of botching a stroke makes Kyle want to keel over and die.
There’s paint all over his hands (which he hates) and the smell is giving him a migraine (which he also hates). He cheated by drawing up a sketch based off the pictures from one of Cohen’s old photographic portfolios he found when snooping around; pictures, it seems, from when he was younger, although it doesn’t bother Kyle because at least he had the good manners to face different directions in all the pictures. Sketching up a base took him literal hours, because making the eyes match had been hell and making sure the canvas matched the photographs just so had nearly driven him up the wall. He’s painting over that, now, and although the books had warned against using flat colors, he really hadn’t seen any other option. Mixing colors? That could take months.
(Also, at some point he started using both hands to paint - he’s ambidextrous, so why not? - and a third paintbrush is clenched between his teeth because he put it there when he picked up the carmine and accidentally forgot about it.)
Painting isn’t very dignified. They do all kinds of gaudy stuff in Fleet Hall, but nothing makes him feel quite as naked as this. The entire thing takes nearly four days of standing in Cohen’s apartment while he sits on his chaise and makes impatient noises under his breath, even though that’s really inconsiderate because painting, damn it to hell, takes time.
The end result makes him wish he were a splicer - so he could set it on fire without going to the trouble of finding matches.
