Underexposure

Underexposure


The artist say absorbed in her latest project, carefully, very carefully sketching the horn of a jeweled dragon on a scented sheet of pink notepaper. This was going to be absolutely awesome. She would sprinkle glitter upon it and sell it on her website. t would be the crowning piece in her 'colorful dragons' series.

There was a rustle. She ignored it.

A pile of papers spilled out from a neglected folder. Old sketches from years ago, ideas, characters, concept that hadn't been touched in months. Sighing she bent down and gathered them roughly into a pile before idly sorting through them. Maybe one of them would be inspiring?

The images were faded and smudged, as if the passage of time had made them... thin somehow, less real; slowly fading back into the ethereal domain of the imagination. She could barely remember the names or designs of any of these things anymore. On one page a half finished sketch of a house on stilts, on another something like a... fairy? On another the vague outline of a rotund pink creature... Drift she'd labelled it hadn't she? It didn't matter.

No, nothing of any value. She scrunched them up and tossed them into the bin, one by one, pretending to be an Ivy League basketball star (There was no such thing of course, but there should have been.) The folder would be useful for storing her more recent artworks, as they said, out with the old and in with the new!

Oh drat!

There was a smudge on her wonderful new dragon drawing! It must have been carelessly put on the paper when she was looking at all those old sketches. She squinted, if you looked carefully under the right conditions, it almost looked like a very faint face, she could almost see a pleading expression on it.

She snorted, grabbed an eraser and watched with satisfaction as she rubbed it out.