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A man paints, his brushes and knives bringing fire to life on the austere canvas. His knife jabs at the palette, cutting into the deeper hues of red, auburn, and smoky maroon; he places fine slabs of paint onto the canvas at the fire's base. He nudges them, molds them, shapes them into tiny forms like the delicate ridges of a fingerprint. Then they sit, hunkering over their feast of logs and shrubbery, wolfing down gobbets of bark and leaf. His brushes set their lighter brethren to dancing over them, orange and yellow and near-white leaping ever upwards. For a few minutes he stares, barely breathing, as the living paint dries, and then lightly runs a fine brush over the half-dried colors, muting their edges and adding rippling heat to the fire's haze.
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quote:

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A man paints, his brushes and knives bringing fire to life on the canvas. His knife jabs at the palette, cutting into the hues of red, auburn, and maroon; he places slabs of paint onto the canvas at the fire's base. He nudges them, molds them, shapes them into forms like the ridges of a fingerprint. Then they sit, over their feast of logs and shrubbery, wolfing down bark and leaf. His brushes set their brethren to dancing over them, orange and yellow and near-white leaping ever upwards. For a few minutes he stares, barely breathing, as the paint dries, and then lightly runs a brush over the colors, muting their edges and adding heat to the fire's haze.

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You'll probably want to add a few back in for sense, but I personally think this reads better. I'd also probably tone down some of the more flowery verbs ("wolfing" I'm looking at you).

Just my opinion. Hope it helps.

You have such strong, almost violent verbs in the second sentence, then turn to "...places fine slabs..." I'd prefer something in the same tone as the first two images, "jabs at the palatte" and "cutting into the deeper hues." Even the word "fine" works against the images you previously invoked. Maybe stick with the action on the palette, showing how the paint looks on the knife, and simply say the colors are "for the fire's base." (Again, preference...I'm dangerously close to rewriting here, and I apologize.)

You stay with the gentle action, "nudges" and "molds" and "shapes", along with fragile images "tiny" and "delicate", then move back to the more imposing "hunkering over their feast" and "wolfing down gobbets". You can see how the rest goes back to gentleness. IMO, the piece would be more coherent if you stuck to a single tone.

(The repetition of the word "over" near the middle and end is distracting, I'd probably cut or change two of them.)

You seem to be working on the poetic side of things (are you familiar with the term "ekphrasis"?), and what you have here functions as a successful prose poem, IMO. But you have the seed for something really special. I think what keeps me from completely loving it is that it seems to make inconsistent statements about:

1.) the nature of the fire (is it greedy, escaping the painter's control? or is it only beautiful, completely dependent on his will?)

and 2.) the nature of the painter (is he angry, painting his own anger onto the canvas? or is he detached, simply engrossed in the process?)

I'm not familiar with "ekphrasis" because (a) I'm an ignorant philistine, and (b) I deliberately avoid knowing words that sound like foreign-language curses.

I've looked it up, though, and although it wasn't what I am going for, it's not bad that you got that idea. I'm trying to provide the reader with a sense of the artist's passion, and of how real this painting is to him; and also of the artist's near-instability, his preternatural zest for fire. Hopefully some of that came through.

I think the back-and-forth of vivid vs. ordinary words stems from a sense that the painter is ordinary, but the painting is not. I arrived at that through intuition rather than planning. At any rate, the "violent verbs" in the second sentence don't match that (newly discovered) ideal, so I have to fix that.

In case you're worried, the artist is the POV character. The POV starts omniscient and slowly gets closer and more limited as the story progresses. There's also conflict, albeit not with another person.

A piece I wrote in the early eighties demanded the phrase sound of silence but I couldn't use it because it had been taken and automatically conjured images of the song. I was devastated because the scene screamed for those words. I had to re-write the entire thing all because the phrase was impossible to use.

"Shrubbery" is out. I recently critiqued a story in which the main character was told to "follow your nose". I told the author that I couldn't help but see Toucan Sam singing that in my head. So many perfectly useful words and phrases have been lost... Someday fiction writers won't be able to say anything -- all words will be cliche.

The story was sent to NewsBys, Rilnian, and Louise (with a slight bit of presumption on my part, Louise, so ignore it if you like).

Here's a revision of the first 13. I think it's better, so thanks to all for your help. I still don't think I've fully addressed Novice's points about the precise nature of the flame, but I think it's closer.

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A man paints, his brushes and knives kindling fire at the edge of an ancient forest. His knife scrapes repeatedly at the palette, gathering the deeper hues: red, auburn, smoky maroon. He deposits them at the fire's base, shaping slabs of paint into delicate forms like the ridges of a fingerprint.

The newly incarnate flames hunker over their feast of logs and underbrush, wolfing down gobbets of bark and leaf. His brushes set their lighter brethren to dancing over them, orange and yellow and near-white leaping ever upwards. For a few minutes he stares, barely breathing, as the living paint dries, and then lightly runs a fine brush over the half-dried colors, muting their edges and adding rippling heat to the fire's haze.

Though silent, quiescent, the colors seem to vibrate with
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Of course, now that I'm re-reading it, I'm not sure I like the way the "fingerprint" bit reads anymore, but that's the way of it...

Thanks,
Oliver

Edited to add line breaks to delineate paragraphs, and to fix an attribution.

"Then they sit, hunkering over their feast of logs and shrubbery, wolfing down gobbets of bark and leaf."

The word "deposits" doesn't feel just right, you might consider finding a verb that refers back to the forest or the fire. (i.e. feeds, stokes, buries, etc.) IMO, the contrast between "slabs" and "delicate" is too pronounced, and I think "slabs" is a bit too heavy, anyway. These things are just personal preference, it works fine as written.

I'd drop the comma here: "barely breathing as the living paint dries". Also, you don't need to repeat "half-dried".