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Art and Meaning • Kyle Rayner
Art and Meaning
Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner
• written for scribe_protra to the palette seriously
Most of the time, he didn't actually consider himself an artist. Or rather, he qualified it. I'm an animator, I'm a comics artist, I do character design, I'm an illustrator. He had friends who he considered to be Artists - the kind of people that did landscapes in pastels, or tortured surrealism with oil paints and ground clay. Real artists. Not a guy who doodles cartoons in the corners of his sketchbook.
But sometimes, Kyle remembered that art was in his blood, and he'd never be able to escape it.
He was on Oa, working on the murals, helping with the rebuilding and generally trying to think about everything but Sora, because had just reached levels of not okay in his head that he wasn't even familiar with. She was unlike anyone he'd ever been with; it had been exciting at first, but he was starting to realize how very different they were. Too different. He wanted to get to know her better. He wanted to be her friend. He wished he'd never seen her as anything more.
Art was roiling under his skin.
On Oa, the days were long and nights were longer - twice, maybe three times as much as an Earth day. He slept in fits and bursts, never keeping to a real schedule, and he was on call anyway - schedules were not something you got used to as a space cop or as an artist. It was the deep Oa night, and he was wide awake.
He rubbed his arms, trying to fight off a shiver that wasn't a chill. He lifted off from the ledge he'd been working at, did a few lazy spirals in the air before that restless visual energy seized him up again. He needed to do something. He needed paint. Acrylics and plaster, something messy and chunky and bright. He was seeing lines of color, darting across the back of his eyes.
Before he knew it, he was making a construct.
It was all he could do. He didn't have the paints on hand so he made them, and it was such a deliciously freeing thing, to be able to create and create and create with no other aim than simply to make something beautiful. Reason and purpose had nothing to do with it. It was art.
He felt rather than heard someone approach, and a low chuckle told him who it was.
"Nice fuckin' picture, Leonardo. You gonna sell that one for a million bucks?"
Kyle cracked a smile under his mask. Guy Gardner. Always there when you needed him. "Actually, I was thinking of putting it on the Qumursi market. It'd rate at least a thousand creds."
That got a laugh, and he turned, smiled bright at his friend and fellow Earth lantern, who clearly thought the painting was a piece of shit. "Well, you'd know. But seriously, what the hell is it?"
Kyle cast a glance over his shoulder. The painting, which had seemed so important just minutes ago, was nothing more than exactly what it appeared - construct paint on construct canvas, abstract and uneven and completely meaningless.
"Fuck if I know," he murmured, and the feeling, that anxiety and restlessness and hopeless emotion, was gone. Out of his system. He was no artist, and he wouldn't ever be, and he was okay with that.
For now.
Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner
• written for scribe_protra to the palette seriously
Most of the time, he didn't actually consider himself an artist. Or rather, he qualified it. I'm an animator, I'm a comics artist, I do character design, I'm an illustrator. He had friends who he considered to be Artists - the kind of people that did landscapes in pastels, or tortured surrealism with oil paints and ground clay. Real artists. Not a guy who doodles cartoons in the corners of his sketchbook.
But sometimes, Kyle remembered that art was in his blood, and he'd never be able to escape it.
He was on Oa, working on the murals, helping with the rebuilding and generally trying to think about everything but Sora, because had just reached levels of not okay in his head that he wasn't even familiar with. She was unlike anyone he'd ever been with; it had been exciting at first, but he was starting to realize how very different they were. Too different. He wanted to get to know her better. He wanted to be her friend. He wished he'd never seen her as anything more.
Art was roiling under his skin.
On Oa, the days were long and nights were longer - twice, maybe three times as much as an Earth day. He slept in fits and bursts, never keeping to a real schedule, and he was on call anyway - schedules were not something you got used to as a space cop or as an artist. It was the deep Oa night, and he was wide awake.
He rubbed his arms, trying to fight off a shiver that wasn't a chill. He lifted off from the ledge he'd been working at, did a few lazy spirals in the air before that restless visual energy seized him up again. He needed to do something. He needed paint. Acrylics and plaster, something messy and chunky and bright. He was seeing lines of color, darting across the back of his eyes.
Before he knew it, he was making a construct.
It was all he could do. He didn't have the paints on hand so he made them, and it was such a deliciously freeing thing, to be able to create and create and create with no other aim than simply to make something beautiful. Reason and purpose had nothing to do with it. It was art.
He felt rather than heard someone approach, and a low chuckle told him who it was.
"Nice fuckin' picture, Leonardo. You gonna sell that one for a million bucks?"
Kyle cracked a smile under his mask. Guy Gardner. Always there when you needed him. "Actually, I was thinking of putting it on the Qumursi market. It'd rate at least a thousand creds."
That got a laugh, and he turned, smiled bright at his friend and fellow Earth lantern, who clearly thought the painting was a piece of shit. "Well, you'd know. But seriously, what the hell is it?"
Kyle cast a glance over his shoulder. The painting, which had seemed so important just minutes ago, was nothing more than exactly what it appeared - construct paint on construct canvas, abstract and uneven and completely meaningless.
"Fuck if I know," he murmured, and the feeling, that anxiety and restlessness and hopeless emotion, was gone. Out of his system. He was no artist, and he wouldn't ever be, and he was okay with that.
For now.