A Brush With Death (Oblivion)

Walkthrough
Listening to rumors around Cheydinhal will lead to hearing of the disappearance of Rythe Lythandas, a famous painter, and that his wife Tivela is grieving and looking for help with finding her husband.

Head over to Rythe Lythandas' house and talk to Tivela Lythandas to start the quest. It turns out that Rythe often locks himself up in his studio, but this time he wasn't seen for several days since. Deciding to further investigate, Tivela used the spare key she swore to use only in special emergencies to get inside the studio while looking for Rythe. Rythe Lythandas was not there at all. She gives you the spare key to unravel the mysterious disappearance of Rythe Lythandas.

Head upstairs into the studio. Take a look around and you will notice the painting can be activated. Activate it and you will find yourself in a strange forest that seems to be painted. You will find Rythe standing near you. Talk to him and upon investigation you will find out that his brush is magical and he uses it to enter his paintings to make them more realistic. This brush was a family heirloom, and was stolen by a Bosmer thief who created some paint trolls to protect him, but they instead killed him, and now wander around the painting. The only way back to Tamriel is to retrieve the brush, which is called the Brush of True Paint, from the thief's body. If you choose to ask Rythe about the trolls, he will give you 6 bottles of turpentine, which inflict extra damage. There are at least 6 trolls which can be difficult to kill. The turpentine is leveled.

Follow the path to the thief's body, though if you want to avoid the trolls try jumping through the rocks between Rythe and the thief's body. Once you retrieve the brush go back to Rythe and he will paint a door back to Tamriel. Stick around if you want to hear the conversation between Rythe and Tivela, otherwise go talk straight to Rythe and you will be rewared the Apron of Adroitness, a piece of light armor with a leveled Intelligence and Agility boost, for your efforts.

Bug
Some people have encountered a game-stopping script bug in this quest, wherein the return portal fails to spawn when the player returns the brush to Lythandas. To simply remove this bug, make sure that you use all the Turpentine before talking with Lythandas. If this bug does occur, however, it is possible to use the console on the PC to teleport out of the painting using the command, player.coc DestinationName, for instance "player.coc CheydinhalRythesHouse", without the quotes, will teleport the player into Rythe's house in Cheydinhal. It is uncertain whether, if the player performs this action after the portal fails to appear, Lythandas will also teleport to his house, enabling the player to finish the quest, but the player at least will be able to escape the painting. If using the console command to teleport out, the player should click on Lythandas prior to, once teleported out, use "moveto player" to teleport him out as well. This might allow completion of the quest. If the player has not yet returned the brush to Lythandas, the bug can possibly be bypassed by first teleporting him to an open area. To achieve this, open the console and select Lythandas, then type "moveto player" and the quest should progress as normal. This solution is not guaranteed, and out of twelve attempts for this author, it didn’t work once. This author used the wait command to wait for an hour as soon as Lythandas started to paint the portal home. This worked twice in a row, so this author suggests this workaround for the PC and possibly both console versions.

For those on the console versions, there are several ways of getting the portal created:

Attack Lythandas before talking to him, and have him chase you down the hill. Yield to him and he should walk up the hill and make the portal. Another method is to kill all six Painted Trolls using the Turpentine you've been given before searching the bandit's body to reclaim the paintbrush. Avoiding the trolls and jumping over rocks to reach the body may cause the glitch. Reloading a save and trying to hand in the paintbrush again also can occasionally work. (Only tested on PS3) Wait an hour. As stated above, this should be done as soon as Lythandas attempts to paint the portal home. Note: In the PS3 version of Oblivion, when you walk into Rythe's room, you will notice that the jar with the paintbrushes is wobbling on the floor and will not stop. if it isn't wobbling, lightly touch it and it will not stop. There is another bug where Rythe gives you the turpentine, but it does not appear in your inventory. Confirmed on Xbox 360.

Trivia

 * The title of this quest may have slightly been inspired by the episode of Darkwing Duck called A Brush With Oblivion, which involved a villain with a magic paint brush.