Art

When it's real, it's real.

Colors have special meaning in Amber. An Amberite's favorite colors not only have a heraldic and symbolic role, but also hint to his or her true nature. Both functions combine in the trump cards of the Amber Tarot (see True Art, below).

Prince Faith has pale colors: eggshell white, light yellow like the yolk of an egg hard boiled in the Polish style, and grey, like the outside of said yolk.

Charles Doore's colors were revealed when Faith created a True Art picture of him, wearing Faith's black and grey coat and exposing skin and appendages colored in blue.

A picture of a place, if it's a True picture, can lead the viewer - if he tries real hard - directly to that place. A True picture of a person can be used by a viewer to communicate with the subject both physically and mentally across the multiverse. Both sides of such a conversation can try and pull the other party to them, along with luggage, friends, mounts and possibly even vehicles.

Although Faith knew (and even created) True Art a while before the game begun, and indeed used True Art to get to Charlottesville in the first place, the first time True Art was exposed in the game was when we found the three Trump cards in Jack's estate:

• A court card done in the likeness of Carl Corey - straight from the classic Dworkin pack (AKA the Amber Tarot)
  • Faith still carries this one on his person
• A scene of a dungeon cell, centered on a mirror turned to face the wall - done by Brand
  • Accidentally left behind when Faith assassinated Magni and subsequently found by Arnulf who used it to launch a magical attack of frost spirits against the castle. After defeating the spirits Faith had the physical location destroyed, rendering the Trump inert.
• A likeness of Prince Faith at age 15 - done by Brand
  • Was given to Charles who lost it to a scorpion Chaos lady who raped him, stole his seed, and passed it on as an heirloom (along with some other newly bought possession) to the fruit of their passion

Later on, Charles found three additional Trumps that belonged to Jack, obviously drawn by Brand:

• A hallway in the dungeons of the Latverian palace
  • Charles carries this one in his sleeve, for safety, and eventually used it to infect Latveria with the Black Road
• A safe house just outside Charlottesville
  • Kept a secret by Charles until laziness forced him to show his hand to Faith
• The Castle of Flying Rocks - from which Charles rescued(?) Oberon, and where Brand too was captive according to Random

Later on Bleys showed us the whole Dworkin pack in lieu of a family album, and when they arrived at Amber they each received a Trump of Amber and a Trump of Gerard.

There are several pieces that were created by Faith, painstakingly described here by order of creation for the benefit of the imaginatively challenged. Unless specifically stated otherwise, these Trumps are in Faith's cylinder of art supplies:

• Equanimity: Fiona by the water - oil on a widescreen canvas. Most of the frame is taken by storming currents of green and blue, decorated with white froth. Some of it is sky, some of it sea, but it's completely seamless, and gives an almost cubist feel of changing perspective. The rightmost third of the frame is a close-up on Fiona, in 3/4 view, gazing into something just beyond the bottom-left corner. Her hair looks like flames of copper, backdropped by all this green, and its curls follow the movement of the currents (or vice versa), but she herself is as serene as everything else is turbulent, an island of safety; her eyes are the only place in the picture where the viewer's eyes can possibly rest.
• Brave New World: Charlottesville main road Landscape - oil on canvas. a classic perspective into a boulevard, framed by autumn leaves on autumn branches, sidewalk on both sides and a nice cafe. Yes, the point of entry is a rather conspicuous one. It's a good thing we don't have masquerade.
• Solitude: rooftop ledge of the Latverian palace and Faith's sanctum, drawn during his first days in Charlottesville - aquarell on rice paper. The picture is dominated by roof tiles, and a visible shitload of attention went into their slightly different hues and lightings. There are also two or three stray vines and a band of sky that is visible at the top, blocked on the left side by the parapet of an attic with a window that's barely low enough for its bottom to makes it into the frame. The most noticeable thing in this picture is the absence of a subject, namely Faith.
  • Destroyed on a visit to Rebma
• Doore: portrait of Charles Doore, done in a rush when he “accidentally” trumped away - industrial oil paint on a long sheet of paper. Pillars of black coat and blue meat, elongated thick vertical strokes with a wide brush. OK to fade out now?
  • Destroyed on a visit to Rebma
• Naïveté: view of the Empire State Building from nearby rooftop - colored chalk on bristol paper. It's a child's POV, looking through a diamond patterned wooden grate at the middle of the building (the bottom and top are out of the frame). There are morning glory stalks climbing the grate and false perspective makes it look as if the few blooming flowers are gigantic and opening into the thick of the tower.
  • Destroyed on a visit to Rebma
• Shelter: an alien landscape on Avernus drawn by Faith from Fiona's memory - soft charcoal on unstretched Canvas. All crags and shadows. It takes some staring into before the perspective (with the shadows from three blurry suns) settles in, but then it suddenly gains the extra dimension, a bit like magic eye posters, except you can really step through the extra dimension here.
• Autumn: the Latverian “operating table” upon which Baron Hagen was lying wounded - aquarell on paper. At first glance the painting looks like a tree in fall, but the blotches of brown and yellows turn out to be blood and tent cloth and the patches of sky are dirty bandages and candles.
  • The tent this Trump led to no longer stands, so the Trump is probably inert
• Subterfuge: Lord Magni's great hall - acrylics on canvas. Another childish POV, from behind one of the two great sculptures on both sides of the fireplace. The great fire is visible on the left edge of the frame. Next to it stands the statue of Jarnsaxa which reaches all the way to the top of the frame, where it is cut at the neck. The right half of the frame is mostly the carved decorations on the back of the statue of Donraz, behind which the viewer is placed, and between the two statues lies the hall itself with its great table.
• Treachery: classic portrait of Duke Weiland - oil on canvas. Duke Weiland from boots to feathers, powerful stance, perfect smile, perfect skin. A bit too perfect. The painting uses something akin to the Uncanny Valley effect to make the Duke seem very untrustworthy for no obvious reason. Clearly the Prince has picked up a thing or two on Earth.
• The Fool: like of the Tarot, but Charles - inc on card
• Moondance: The entrance to Tir-na Nogth's dungeons - Black inc on Black card. Taken from Corwin's memory, using his focus on secondary senses (gained by long months of blindness) and his being a nostalgic poofter; looks more like a woodcut than an inc-job, all slices of black and white in a sort of a harlequin pattern.
• Lunacy: Brand, with the moonlight playing hard enough to make him look like Charles - inc on Black card. Transparent layers of pale color that merge - in an attempt to paint Charles while guarding the Tir Pattern - into a surprising Brand.
  • In Faith's pocket
• Alfodr: Charles from below, behind a grassy knoll - inc on card. The first impression is that the knoll is a hillside, and the Blue of Charles is the sky, with his head outlined by the brilliance of the sun from behind
  • Given to Charles and left by him in a box for Merlin
• Charlottesville - came out as a map with a red circle
• Latveria - came out as…?

An art student they met in Charlottesville revealed to them that, although she seems not to be aware of doing it, she can create true art.

• Kraken: Alice specializes in wall paintings, street art, etc. This is a painting of a monstrous octopus which she painted as a commission for Jules on the floor of the pool at his house. Done in spray paints for a lush, hyper-real effect, the creature rises from the sea floor, where mens' bones are encrusted in the colorful coral reefs.
• Portrait of Jules: a sketch made by Alice of Jules, the rich guy who hosts college mixers in his Charlottesville home, later discovered to be named Xul - Pencil on sketchbook
  • Alice gave this one to Charles
• Portrait of Charles: a sketch of Charles Doore done in Alice's sketchbook; she drew it as “payment” for giving them her drawing of Jules.