Lessons from life drawing, again

In which I discover more new things about life

Photo by Mona Miller on Unsplash

Dear readers: thanks so much for being here! I encourage you to read the first essay HERE to add context! This series is going to continue to be free, so READ ON and don’t forget to hit the ❤️ so I know you’ve joined me in semi-agony as I attempt learning lessons on life from a life drawing class!

Lessons from life drawing: three hours in the middle of a Thursday when I check out of “normal” life and enter a secret, sunlit world in which I study, and attempt to draw, naked people.

The master’s art studio is convoluted to get to, and I’m still figuring out the best way to get there. I think of three routes, but decide to leave early and take back roads. I’ll use the time to empty my mind and prepare for that most strenuous of mental exercises, seeing the truth of what’s really there. Loading my drawing supplies in the car and firing it up, I keep the radio off and mentally review the things I decided to do after the last class.

1. Practice drawing during the week. Well, the new sketchbook is sitting on the seat next to me, unopened, but I did buy it.

2. Keep the radio off and cultivate mental white noise. That didn’t work at all. The effect of the class, that addictive dreamy calm, lasted about one day before I was back to my usual hectic mental myopia.

3. Really look at, and notice, the world around me. Also not really happening. I’m too busy and overwhelmed right now with my therapy job and my author business. But at least I wrote a decent essay last week, which I sent off to a literary magazine to challenge myself, purchased a sketch pad for outside-class practice, and bought gel insoles for the shoes I’m wearing! Hopefully my physical suffering improves as a result.

The slender tattooed model is here again. Happy to see her, I impulsively show her the blog post I wrote, using my phone to access it in an empty moment before class starts.

As she takes the phone, I’m immediately petrified that I wrote something unflattering or that will hurt her feelings and make her feel shitty modeling for us again. Oh, God, why did I show her the post? I can’t even remember what I said, only that I meant admiration.

I’m practically chewing my nails as I set up my easel and she scrolls through my writing, dignified in the towel she’s wearing to cover up. She looks up from reading and says, “I model because I’m an artist too. I like to challenge myself to do hard things. I’m brave.”

I remember that in my essay, I speculated on her motives for exhibiting her naked body to us.

Oh man, I want to drop into a hole.

“Thank you, that’s so great to know,” I’m babbling and nervous. “It’s so weird because there’s no communication. We are all just in our bubbles, projecting stuff onto each other. Writers are the worst that way.” I’m still hoping I haven’t hurt or affected her feelings about modeling for us today, but it seems to be okay because she says, “That was some good writing. Especially the part about the backlit gecko ribs.”

Class gets underway. I position myself in front to avoid some of those awful foreshortening angles. We do longer poses this time, fifteen minutes working up to thirty. I’m still struggling, but the gel insoles help, and having more time is less stressful though my efforts are not any better.

I notice new things about our model. Her neck is curved and graceful. There’s something warriorlike and determined about her demeanor as she finds ways to sit and stand without moving for extended periods. She has noble bones: her cheekbones and jaw are prominent and almost equidistant, below a short forehead.

Not that I ever get around to drawing her face. I entertain the modest hope of positioning her head correctly on the paper as an amorphous blob as I track the rest of her in two dimensions.

The master must find me particularly terrible; he keeps coming by, making a tiny tsking sound in the back of his throat as he observes, correcting my stance, the height of my easel, even my grip on the pencil.

“Vat ees rong here?” His Russian accent makes the question intense as he cocks his head, eyes on my latest atrocity. He’s classically trained and reminds me of a very serene male ballet dancer, every inch of his tidy frame radiating discipline. I’m totally intimidated by him.

“The shoulder is too big. The leg is too short.” Yep, I’m still only seeing the parts, not the whole.

“You are right.” He bestows this on me with a nod like it’s a gift. I can identify the distortions, even if I’m unable to correct them. “You must stop thinking so much. You need to see and record what’s there. You are too busy interpreting.”

These statements sound like some kind of keys to life; I want to run over and write them down in my journal. Instead, the master calls everyone over as he shows me how to use a plumbline to map the placement of key points on the body, how to use a pencil to divide the figure in half, then sketch the dimensions using the midpoint for reference.

I’ve never learned this technique before. I pretend to understand, nodding and saying “Ah, yes,” because I hate not understanding so much that I can’t bear to ask him to explain it a third time.

But, he finds out anyway when he catches me using my pencil to gauge the midpoint, then laying the pencil on the paper and literally halving it.

“No, no, no,” he says, icy blue eyes twinkling like the sun on a glacier. “You use the pencil to find the midpoint, but that does not mean the drawing is the size of your pencil.”

My cheeks feel hot. “Do you have any vodka? I think that would help.”

And he does laugh then, along with the rest of the class, and says, “It does not help. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Yes, he’s Russian.

I drive home via the predictable but boring highway that’s probably the easiest route after all. I feel better than last time. I’ve accepted my ineptitude. It still smarts, but laughing about it helps.

I’ve decided to keep writing about this experience as a way to get a “two fer”—creating writing, plus my puerile art attempts. I will try to be as naked and brave as our model, exploring and sharing what I find out about myself through the challenge of the class.

Fuzzy white silence finally accompanies my contemplation of the moving clouds visible on the mountain and the sinuous, empty curves of the road. I am drained and yet full once again, as I turn up the mountain toward home.