Grace

Grace is my character, she's a lot like me the most like me I've ever written anyone to be. She has very short red hair that she hacked off with a blunt pair of scissors, but whats left curls erratically. She is a braver, fierce, stronger and more beautiful version of myself but of course this is fiction, I'm allowed to exggerate. Grace came into being on a really stormy evening quite a few years ago now. I still had my long hair back then, it hung over my face as I liked it, so self conscious I let it spill over my shoulders and hide me even when in the seclusion of my bedroom.

 I remember the rain was vicious, it hammered so hard on the thin glass window I thought it might break through. There was lightening too, it was the lightening that got me to pick up my notebook. Laptop didnt exsist in my life then, neither did money. I was sat and thinking about myself, could I write myself but maybe twinge it abit, the nose with a few freckles, dull green eyes, one length straight as the rain hair. I began and I started my transformation. Make those eyes only dull because the air is hard to breathe draining her, the mouth a little more pouty, the cheekbones higher. The hair, something really had to be done about that. Red, it had to be, the colour of passion, lust and love and erratically curly, soft spirals every where, then I felt my own hair in my hands, there was so much of it, it was my mothers glory not mine, I went to the mirror and pushed it back with my hands piling it on top of my head. examining my cheeks, my neck without the veil, letting it fall back down I scribbled some lines out and wrote "hacked off, brutally sheared with what? a knife no too violent, a pair of kitchen scissors, rusty so the cuts are all uneven but the curls still spiral beautifullly."

I quickly changed from pen and book to pencil and sketch paper, I was careful to do this properly, I wanted her face hidden because I could never portray beauty the way I wanted, if I showed her face she'd just be plain and dull, I had that hair spiraling down, her neck arched. I pondered the positioning and then when the sketch was finished I debated one last thing, even though she was turned away she didnt have any indication of breasts, I didnt like that, Grace is 17. I was still flat as a iron board but I was going to change that through Grace. I added the soft curve of breasts and this is the finished result.

 

I went on to do the coloured version, watercolours, obviously the hair was the most important part, I waited until last to begin and i used the finest of brushes to sweep and dip and wind the curls of fire around her head. Before my eyes Grace had formed and she was missing just one thing, something to make this girl special and in my mind I gave her what I'd always longed for, I gave her wings.