Having Fun Isn't Hard

[Aster]

((Bridgette Sommerfeld continued from Imparare))

Bridgette normally ate her lunch in the cafeteria before heading over to the library. If she could she'd just eat her lunch there, though there was a no-food policy and even though kids rarely got busted for it she wasn't one to break rules. She liked the library and it's quiet atmosphere, even when there was a lot of people inside. It was a nice place to relax during lunch and a perfect opportunity to draw, study, hang out with friends or some combination of those three. Right now she was alone, though she was hoping that someone would drop by to talk.

She was sitting at one of the tables in the center of the library, sketchbook laid out in front of her. She was starting another drawing, sketching the guidelines for a generic figure. After some thought she decided to go for a heftier figure, though she didn't know where to go from there. Bridgette tended to let the ideas come to her as she drew, though at the moment she didn't know what to draw. Nothing she thought of struck her fancy, so she was stuck staring at a blank mannequin on her page.

Oh, what to draw, what to draw...

[ViolentMedic]

((Daniel "Danny" Brooks: Pre-Game Start.))

Danny arrived by clattering his way into the chair next to Bridgette and dropping his bag onto the table with a thunk.

"Why're you spending your lunch in here? Libraries are quiet." Danny paused, then grinned and put on a melodramatic 'serious-guy-in-a-movie' voice. "It's quiet in here. Too quiet."

He leaned over to peer at what Bridgette was drawing, dropping his face into his hands as he gazed at the page with fascination.

"Whatcha drawing?" he asked, without giving her a chance to answer his first question.

[Aster]

Bridgette settled on refining the figure until she could think of something. She was still absorbed in drawing when Danny sat down next to her. Danny was a friend she met through ballet, and therefore one of her closest friends. She liked having him around; he was an excellent conversationalist, and he was a good person to just talk to after a long day.

She smiled at Danny's attempt at a serious voice, but didn't look up as she put her eraser to the paper to clean up the line work. She opted to ignore the library question in favor for the second one.

"I...don't know, actually," she admitted, brushing off the eraser shavings as she studied the figure. "I mean, I'm drawing a person, but I just don't know who." She huffed and leaned back, glancing up towards the ceiling before returning to the drawing.

[ViolentMedic]

Danny kept staring at the picture, face still propped on his hands.

"What about a ninja? Or like a warrior person with lightning and shit going 'bzzttpewpewpew.' Or... no, no, wait! A ninja with lightning. Or one of those bearded wise dudes with the martial arts skills. Who're all like 'hwaaaaah!'" He made a kung-fu gesture and nearly smacked Bridgette in the face. "Shit, sorry. But if I'd punched your head off and you hadn't been you and instead had been, I don't know... someone villainous and muahahaha... it would have been cool. If I'd been an old man on a mountain or something. You should draw that."

Having totally solved Bridgette's quandary on drawing ideas, he beamed at her.

He liked Bridgette. She had mad drawing skills, and she didn't shout at him, and she was smart and knew a lot of stuff. Never had time to hang out outside of school, which sucked, and made it even more perplexing that she'd spend her spare time in the library of all places, because why?

[Aster]

Those weren't half-bad ideas. Her usual subject matter was either fantasy or sci-fi, so she hadn't explored any Asian-based designs. Those might be interesting to try and draw. She flinched when Danny almost hit her, though she brushed it off as horseplay and gave him a pass. At least he didn't actually hit her. "You've gotta be more careful" She chastised jokingly. "We're in a library, after all. Anyway, those are some pretty good ideas. I'll go with the...er, 'old man on the mountain' thing."

She looked down at the paper and scrunched her nose. She wasn't that good at drawing old people. It was their faces that gave her trouble: all those wrinkles and stuff were difficult for her to pull off with accuracy. Bridgette didn't draw faces that much, anyway, so it shouldn't be that much of a problem. She still needed to draw a beard, though, just to add flair to the drawing.

Bridgette paused, her pencil hovering above the paper before she put it down and sighed. "I need a reference picture to work from," she whipped out her phone and turned to Danny. "What should I google? 'Old man on mountain', or is that too generic?" She looked at the blank search bar. "Maybe 'monk' would work..."

[ViolentMedic]

"I dunno. 'Old man on mountain' might work, but maybe, uh... yeah, monk. Or 'old kung fu guy.' Or you could Google that old man who did the kung fu teaching in Kill Bill Vol.2? Uhhhh... Pai Mei? He was cool. ...Wait, no, he was a douchebag. But a cool one. Or just look up an old man and then add some, uh... robes and shit."

Danny's elbows slid apart until he'd moved from propping his face up with his hand to his face using the table as a pillow.

"Seriously, though, there's places to draw outside. Less silent-as-the-grave places. Can't eat in here, either. Well, you can. But you have to be sneaky."

[Aster]

Bridgette paused, listening to Danny go on before finally typing in 'old monk', hitting enter and seeing...

...a bunch of alcohol. Huh, who knew old monk was a brand of whiskey? She chuckled and flashed the phone screen at Danny before trying again with 'old kung fu guy'. That did the trick.

Danny asked another question about the library. "That's the good thing about this place," she responded, setting her phone down next to the sketchbook and nodding to herself. "It's quiet, and I like quiet. It's very peaceful and relaxing here. Y'know, people like their peace and quiet, so I come here. Sure, it's not optimal for hanging out but...yeah." She trailed off.

"Okay, so this looks like a good picture," She said, clicking on one of the pictures. "What do you think?"

[ViolentMedic]

Shit, right. Bridgette likes quiet stuff. Danny wasn't being quiet. Chattering was the opposite of quiet. He was being loud and ruining her quiet time and their friendship. Well, the second thing was a maybe. But it felt like a very strong maybe right at that second.

He stood up in order to peer over her shoulder at the kung-fu man picture.

"Sweet leg movements. That guy could kick a giant in the face without having to jump. Yeah, that's good." He peered at the Google results and gestured at one of the other pictures. "Oh, there's the Pai Mei dude. Check those eyebrows. Phwor."

He sat back down, returning to propping his face on his hands.

"I'm just gon' watch. In silence, because... quiet time."

[Aster]

Bridgette nodded. "Those are some pretty...fluffy eyebrows," She noted before picking up her pencil again. Danny offered to just sit quiet and watch, which Bridgette was fine with. While she would've liked to talk to Danny as she drew, she also drew better in silence.

She enlarged the picture on her phone and began to sketch the general shape of the clothes. She lightly drew the airy tunic and tight sleeves on the arms and legs. She also began to outline the facial hair, drawing in a long, wispy beard. After some thought, she penciled in some eyebrows as well.

She paused to see her work. It looked fine, just a bit too...faithful to the original. While Bridgette did pay attention to detail, she also didn't like drawing from just one picture. She liked to experiment and mix different reference pictures together to create a whole new design. Even though it was her first time drawing this sort of thing, she still wanted to use multiple references.

But she still needed the old photo for further reference. She saved the picture on her phone before going back to the search results, scrolling through to find a new picture.

[ViolentMedic]

Danny watched Bridgette draw for a while, trying his best to stay quiet. Or to not move around, because that made noise. But it was difficult. He started drumming his fingers against the table after a while, shifting around in his seat. He could draw. But he didn't like doing that while people were watching. He couldn't dance in the library, either. He could try, but he'd probably knock down a shelf.

Ughh, who could spend their time being quiet? Well, the answer was Bridgette.

But if he got up, she'd know he was bored and then she'd be like 'am I boring you' and then Danny would feel like a jerk.

He gazed at the in-progress picture of the old man. It'd be cool if he were shooting lightning out of his hands or something.

[Aster]

Google Image search results tend to get weirder the deeper you go. Bridgette was still close to the surface, however, so it wasn't as weird as it could be. Thankfully the Pai Mei guy didn't dominate the search results, but most of the pictures were face or portrait shots. Not so much clothing. Bridgette wrinkled her nose as she kept scrolling...

...Jesus Christ, what an awful photo.

'Old kung fu guy' wouldn't get her anywhere. She tapped on the search bar again and typed in 'monk clothes'. A couple of the first searches were too European for the aesthetic she was going with, but she found a suitable picture very quickly.

"Hmm..." Incorporating this with the previous clothing would be a little difficult. She turned to Danny, showing him the screen. "How would you mix this design with the other one?"

[ViolentMedic]

Danny was distracted from idly staring at some graffiti scraped into the desk (the contents of which were not worth repeating) when he realised Bridgette was asking him something.

"What? Oh. Uhhhhhh..."

Outfit design was not his forte.

"Put... that thing... over the other thing?" Danny scratched the back of his head, then said, "Maybe it's chilly outside. Because mountain. Layers. I dunno."

[Aster]

Bridgette tapped the pencil eraser against her chin as she listened to Danny's input. It wasn't too bad of an idea. It was the more obvious one, but it wasn't the worst idea she'd ever heard. But throwing one over the other wasn't enough to create a whole new design. She could remove the tighter spots from the legs, leave it covered by a longer tunic.

Yeah, that'd work.

She nodded in reply. She erased the clothing on the legs and drew in a flowing robe, with a cloth belt around the waist. This was coming along just fine.

[Espi]

((Henry Spencer continued from Cruising and Perusing))

Contrary to popular opinion, Henry liked the school's little library. Sure, it was lacking in some areas, but it made up for it in charm. And it had a surprising number of non-fiction books that, while aged, had contained a variety of interesting factoids Henry stored away for further pondering of. Plus, it was nice and bright and good for reading, even if he had to bring his own books.

BYOB, what an interesting acronym. It was also used as a term in restaurants and parties, for "bring your own beer" to inform guests that alcohol wasn't served. It sounded internet-based, but apparently was older than that. Interesting! Henry learned that just now, browsing Wikipedia on his phone. Another reason the library was cool; the librarians didn't yell at you for being on your phone.

Lunchtime went by quickly for Henry, since he was a fast eater, so he'd opted to hang out in the library for a bit, just to relax before afternoon classes started up. He was unusually tired today from his late-night reading, but that meant he was still pretty energetic compared to many of his classmates. Geez, some of them were like zombies. Zombie high school, sounded like one of those Japanese animes or something. Wait, wasn't there one of them already? Hmm...

Henry heard conversation from the table near the one he was seated at. Cocking his head to glance over, Henry was pleasantly surprised to spy Bridgette and Daniel sitting together. Daniel was cool, though Henry didn't know Bridgette very well. Still, a person you don't know very well is just a friend you haven't made, or something like that. Regardless! Time to introduce himself.

Approaching the table, Henry offered a big grin and pocketed his phone. "Hey guys! How's it going?" Henry said, a little too loudly for the library. Whoops. Hopefully the librarians didn't get upset, he liked them. "Sorry." He added in a hushed voice. "But no, what's up?" Hopefully they didn't reply with one of those "The sky" comments and the like. The sky wasn't technically "up", after all. Was it? It was sort of...hmm...Henry didn't know! What even quantified "up" anyway? He ought to look that up.

[ViolentMedic]

Danny went back to observing the graffiti on the desk. Not that Bridgette's thing was boring or anything, but he'd see it when it was done. What was boring was libraries. Ughhh. He could work on some shit, but people might look at it and ask questions and be like 'your art skills suck' and fuck that. He started bouncing a little in his seat.

Then that weird Henry guy turned up. He was okay, Danny supposed. Sometimes his friends were like 'oh, that dude is weird' and Danny was all 'yeah, he's totally weird.' But whatever, people were weird in general.

"Sup. And it's a library, man. Nothing's up except, uh... y'know, books and shit."

Danny retrieved a pencil from his bag and started using it to shade over the rude graffiti on the desk, for lack of anything else to do.