Written in the style of The Ninth Technique by China Mieville:

“He sequestered himself in the studio,” the arcane investigator concluded. This particular technique must be performed in total and complete isolation.

A cheap rented loft, a bearded and slightly balding man hunched on the floor before a blank canvas. The utter isolation of his creative haven tugged at Sarah with acute longing. She pictured the artist staring at the canvas, snapping his fingers as one might spark up a light, until suddenly: a glimmer of color, a hint of texture reaching up from the invisible palette. It bled across the gap into the canvas, where it poured out and took shape as a completed picture, the extraction of vague inspiration into something with contour and tangible form.