Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain ©2018 Elder Road Books, Serialized edition ISBN 978-1-939275-83-7
Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain
18
School Days
I CHECKED MY CLASS SCHEDULE and saw that two of my classes in the Art building were back-to-back on Tuesday through Thursday. Both were lectures in the same room at ten and eleven. Then I had to truck halfway across campus for my Literature and the Arts course. My last class of the day wasn’t until three o’clock and was the only ‘art’ class I had. At least what I considered art. That was my Drawing Concepts and Methods class. My last class was the Colloquium in Art and it met irregularly, based on when lecturers were coming in. We were told at registration not to miss the first session next Tuesday at five in the afternoon.
By the time I got to my drawing class, I was pretty discouraged. I wasn’t going to be painting and making much art this term. In fact, I was going to be reading and writing papers. 2D Design would have a few studio projects, but according to the syllabus, the first four weeks were focused on a survey of 2D art and color theory. Foundations of Contemporary Art was a lecture on principles and ideas in the various movements of the past century. I guess we were supposed to fit into one of them or something. And the Western Culture course, Literature and the Arts, was going to start with Akhenaten’s Egypt. Professor Merck was pretty cool, though. Just from his attitude and posture, you could tell he toked up before the lecture and really didn’t want to be there.
“You’ve got a fabulously expensive text book that you picked up at the bookstore,” he said, “so it would be criminal if I didn’t make you read it. The ancient Egypt chapter is first. Your task in reading the chapter is to identify the heresy of Akhenaten and how it affected the development of the arts in Egypt of 1350 BC and changed its direction for centuries to come. This is going to take you some time to figure out, so why don’t we cancel class for tomorrow and come prepared to discuss the subject on Tuesday next week. Class dismissed.”
I wondered if he was always going to have short classes and cancel them. I checked his website and syllabus and the cancelled session was posted there with a more complete description of what he wanted us to cover in our reading. It looked like he actually expected us to get something out of it, so I figured I’d put some effort into my prep. Heck, I had almost a week to read and figure out what he wanted.
It was finally time for the class that I wanted—Drawing. I had my supplies and wondered what we’d be drawing first. This was the only class I had in a studio. Professor Blankenship, however, was not what I expected. I’d met three professors in the Art Department during my interview and thought they were all okay. Blankenship was a bastard.
“Children, sit down and shut up,” he started at exactly three o’clock. “For some reason, you all think you can draw. Did any of you even bring a pencil? Paper? What do you need? Finger paints? Get something in front of yourself that you can draw on and get ready. This is your subject.” He pointed to a plain black vase. “You have fifteen minutes and then I’ll look at your doodles and tell you if there’s any hope for you as an artist. The rest of you can switch over to computer graphics. Time starts now.”
Shit! I wasn’t expecting my one art class to be the worst on my schedule. What an asshole! I heard a sniffle and glanced to my right. A girl with dirty blonde hair and a baggy sweater was sitting with her art pad in front of her and tears running down her cheeks. Her hands were shaking so much I was sure she couldn’t get a shape drawn on the paper. She looked up at me just as I glanced at her. Her scowl seemed to melt a little, though, when I just nodded and mouthed out the words, “You can do it.” She nodded back and bent to her drawing.
That left me to mine. Dr. Anders had said they were going to teach me to slow down when I interviewed and here this jerk was giving us fifteen minutes to produce a drawing that our art careers were going to be based on. A drawing of a black vase. We could just scribble it with a crayon.
I looked at the vase and plotted out the major points of the shape. As soon as my graphite touched the pad, my soul lifted and I was drawing. Fifteen minutes? Fuck him. I’m not going to rush through a drawing just to satisfy his stopwatch. The more I looked at the vase, the more I saw. It wasn’t a flat black shape. It was shiny and reflected light. Of course, that was what would give it shape and turn it into a three-dimensional object. But there was more there and the deeper I sank into my drawing space, the more I saw. I could see the front edge of the pedestal it was sitting on reflected in the downward slope of the vase. In the midst of the highlight, I could see the girl who’d been crying reflected in a distorted way. I could see Professor Blankenship elongated and reflected on the other side. Suddenly the exact shape and contours of the vase no longer mattered. The vase was a canvas of reflections. I was lost in what I was seeing.
The bastard blew a whistle!
“Fuck!” I know mine was one of the voices that responded, but not the only one by a longshot. He started moving around the room immediately. There were eighteen of us in the class. As usual in Art, only four of us were male. It had been that way all the way through high school as well. Art is for sissies and no one wants to be a sissy. I didn’t care.
“You need to work on perspective,” Blankenship said, pointing at one piece of art. He moved to the next. “There’s no depth.” At another, “You should be a cartoonist, that’s the only direction your art is taking you.” “What the hell is that?” It seems like he didn’t have a good word to say about anyone. He stopped behind me and just stood there for a minute. My drawing wasn’t complete—not even close. In fact, there was only a hint of the outline. Instead, I’d focused on what I saw reflected. He cleared his throat. “Next time try drawing the vase,” he said and moved on to the girl who’d cried. I could see her hands were still shaking. I wondered if it was just her nerves or if it was some condition she had.
Blankenship surprised her and me, too, when he reached out and touched her hand. It seemed to steady a little. “I’ll show you how,” he said softly. Then he went to the front of the room and turned to stare us down again. As far as I could tell he hadn’t really said anything positive about anyone’s drawing.
“So, what makes you think you’re an artist?” he demanded. “Put your hands down. That was a rhetorical question. Look up the meaning. You undoubtedly all have mothers who still have your kindergarten scribbles tacked to the refrigerator. You’ve been told your drawings were good since the first time you stuck a crayon in an electrical outlet. Oh, you’re so talented, you should become an artist. Let me tell you exactly what all that means. Shit! You couldn’t run fast or play baseball or weren’t big enough for football, so you should be an artist. You weren’t pretty enough or couldn’t cook or were a failure at math and music, so you should be an artist. Art is where you got shoved because you weren’t good enough to do anything else. All the praise you got from your grandma, the awards you got at the 4-H Fair, the pictures on the refrigerator—none of that means shit. Accidentally drawing something that could be construed as looking like this simple black vase doesn’t mean you are talented.”
Blankenship was on a roll. I could see that every student in the class hated him already. He lectured and expected us to listen. Mostly he told us why none of what we knew or had accomplished meant anything.
“Limit your vision! Look at this vase. Find one thing about the vase and draw that. Not the whole vase. No! I’m not going to give you an example. Figure it out. Ten minutes. Certainly, there must be one thing about this simple black vase that you can draw in ten minutes. Ready, set, go.”
Fuck! We were drawing again. I looked at the vase and turned to a fresh sheet of paper. There was an indentation near the bottom of the vase and then it flared out flat from there to the table. I started with that, but quickly realized that what I was looking at was the vase reflected in the table’s surface. Reflection reverses the perspective. What was convex becomes concave. I found myself sinking into the drawing again.
Thankfully, the class ended before Blankenship blew his whistle. He had a big clock in front of the room and we looked up to discover it was five o’clock and he’d already left. Without saying anything to any of us. We all kind of looked at each other and then started packing up our materials. The blonde was gone before I could speak to her, so I just headed out to go home.
“SO, YOU SURVIVED Blankety’s first day,” Eva said when she spotted me in the hall.
“Were you waiting for me?” I asked.
“Yeah. I wanted to check in and see if you survived. I was going to try to talk to you after orientation yesterday, but I had a tour that simply would not end. Our group was the last one back. So, how did it go?”
“Mostly okay, I guess. This class isn’t what I expected, that’s for sure. Does it get better from here?”
“No. It gets worse. Blankety never says anything positive about anything. I sometimes wonder how anyone can be so fucking negative about everything. You will never meet a student who likes him.”
“Why call him Blankety?”
“It’s short for Blankety-blank-blank. Somebody couldn’t find enough obscenities,” she said. “So, you want to get together this weekend?” Wow! That came out of nowhere.
“Uh… What do you mean?”
“I was just thinking of hanging out.”
“I work six to two on Saturday.” I wondered how the girls would take me meeting Eva to ‘hang out’ on the weekend. I wondered what she planned to hang out for me. But it gave me an idea. “Why don’t you plan to come over around four and stay for dinner with my girlfriends and me?”
“Your girlfriends? Plural?” she raised an eyebrow and sort of sniffed. “Sure. Maybe I could find a few boyfriends.”
“There’s a house full of them next door if that’s what you’re interested in.” I scribbled down our address and handed it to her.
“Party row, huh? I thought you were a serious student.”
“It’s up to you. Come and see. You’ll be surprised.”
“YOU INVITED your new girlfriend to dinner Saturday? Here? Aren’t you afraid we’ll, like, scratch her eyes out?” Kelly asked.
“I’d just come out of Blankety’s art class from hell and was really tired of people doubting me. She says she wants me to paint her,” I said. I recognized Kelly was pulling my chain, but somehow felt it was necessary to justify myself anyway. “I figure that if she isn’t comfortable with all of you, she isn’t suitable for the project I have in mind.”
“Do you mind if one of us seduces her? Or two of us?” Ariel asked as she glanced toward Jas.
“Maybe all of us?” Jas giggled.
“You might not even like her,” I sighed. “But give her the full treatment, whatever that is. I don’t think we should have anyone else move into the house though. Can we at least agree on that?” The girls all started laughing.
“Jett, you are so much fun to tease,” Sarah Lynn said. “You know where I stand on this. Paint her. Fuck her. Marry her, for all I care. Just don’t leave us.”
“That sounds so fucking weird.”
“So does five girlfriends living with their boyfriend,” Jas said. “I just accept that it’s weird and fill my mouth with yummy snootch.”
“What kind of project do you have in mind, Jett? You said that as if you already have a picture forming in your head,” Char said.
“Yeah. Sort of. It’s like I can see it but it isn’t quite real yet. Remember when I painted you and Sarah Lynn as the frame?”
“Do I ever!”
“I think I might have come more times that night than ever before in my life,” Sarah Lynn added.
“I’ve got this notion of making her a part of the canvas,” I said. “I know I can’t just glue her to it and hang it, but I’m thinking of a way to incorporate both the model and the canvas more… permanently… than just taking a photo.”
“Performance,” Kelly said. She was naked already and planned to go online in an hour. Her Wednesday night shows were bath shows so all the other girls were using my bathroom while Kelly set up her camera and lights in the upstairs bath. “You all haven’t seen the video I did of Char and Sarah Lynn getting framed.”
“It’s like two hours long, isn’t it?”
“I edited and used some special effects to speed the process. I’ve got it down to fifteen minutes,” Kelly said. “It might even be a good idea to show it to this girl—Eva?—so she knows exactly the kind of painting Jett wants to do.”
“I wonder if we could find a place where he could perform the painting,” Ariel mused. “I’m thinking of a recital kind of thing. Live performance with a music video afterward.”
“I love to paint while you’re practicing, Ariel. I just don’t think people would be comfortable sitting in an auditorium for three hours watching me paint,” I said.
“I bet I could get subscribers for a videocast as well,” Kelly said. “But I agree that a recital hall isn’t the best venue. Besides, you need to figure out how you are going to handle things like potty breaks. You might be able to drop into a zone and stay focused for three hours straight, but Char and Sarah Lynn were about to burst when you finished the frame painting. I’ve got to go get ready for my bath show. Anyone tuning in tonight?”
“My only assignments are reading and it isn’t due until Tuesday. I’m definitely going to watch my favorite redhead shave her legs and pussy and get herself off,” I laughed.
“I’ve got reading to do,” Ariel said. “I want to be finished so I can taste those smooth pussy lips and yummy juices when your show is over.”
“Oh, girlfriend! If you can lick around Jett’s cock sliding in and out, it’s a date!”
THURSDAY WAS a lighter day since there was no Literature and the Arts class. I was dreading going back into Blankety’s classroom, but at least it was more interesting than the two lectures.
“Hey. I’m Jett,” I said to the dirty blonde I’d noticed in class the day before. “You think today’s class will be as weird as Tuesday’s?”
“Um… Hi. I guess. I’m Mary. It was a little nerve-wracking. I might not make it.”
“If uh… you need to talk or anything… let me know. I’m a little overwhelmed myself… But maybe there’s safety in numbers,” I said. She looked at me a little strangely, like I’d just grown another head.
“Th- thanks.”
Blankety swept into the room at exactly three o’clock and started in on the proper use of different hardnesses of graphite and what paper texture was best. Then he put a teddy bear on the pedestal where the vase had been the first day.
“Two drawings. Fifteen minutes each. One is to be drawn with a 4H pencil. The other is to be drawn with a 4B. Capture what the graphite tells you to.” He snapped a stopwatch and put his damned whistle between his teeth. We started drawing. I didn’t have time to waste watching to see if Mary was okay. She was bent over her sketchbook. I drew.
I wasn’t going to get any great revelations of reflections out of this drawing. This was a technical drawing lesson. He’d just lectured us on what each hardness of graphite was best for, and the 4H was definitely a drafting pencil. I sharpened it to a fine point and began laying in the outline of the teddy bear. I started with big features, the shape, the eyes, the nose, the white patch on the chest and bottoms of the feet. I was tempted to draw lines and label each part but decided that was too risky at this stage of the class. I didn’t want to get a reputation as a smartass with a prof who was a bastard. It didn’t take long to do the technical drawing though and I had several minutes left in my time period. It was tempting to lay the pencil on its side and fill in the color areas to be shaded. I resisted.
Instead, I noticed the contours of the bear and began drawing short straight lines from about thirty degrees from the left and used those short lines to do my shading. I was not quite finished when that damned whistle blew. I wondered if this guy had been a football coach in a former life. Fucker!
I grabbed a different sketch pad and my 4B pencil. This pad had a little more tooth and slightly lighter weight than the drawing pad I’d used for the first drawing. I didn’t sharpen my 4B quite like I had the 4H. I laid in large areas with the side of the pencil and blended them with my thumb. I created highlights with my artgum eraser and then went back with my thumb to blend them. I could have used a blending stump and had cleaner hands. I thought briefly about what my mother would think of the graphite streaks I wiped on my khaki slacks. Oh well. When the damn whistle blew again, I had something that looked almost squeezable. I looked over at Mary and she was sitting there slumped back in her chair with her eyes closed. She was breathing in short bursts.
I recognized the signs. I guess that’s one of the things my generation is known for. Anxiety and panic attacks. Ford had been diagnosed with asthma for five years before they realized his shallow breaths and gasps were panic attacks. But we were raised with kids like that and understood—at least some of us understood—that it was as real and as painful as asthma. I reached over and touched Mary’s sleeve. Her eyes popped open and she focused on me.
“Deep. Deep breaths, Mary,” I said as I demonstrated inhaling and exhaling. “You aren’t alone here. You can get through this. Deep breaths. Get in touch with what’s around you. No one will hurt you.” She made a short nod and worked on mimicking my breathing pattern.
“Maybe you should switch to technical school,” Blankenship said over my left shoulder. My heart leaped into my throat as I realized he’d been working his way around the classroom criticizing people. “You press too hard.” “Learn to blend.” “What a mess you’ve made.” And now to me. “Technical School.”
Aside from that he looked at the drawings and nodded then went on to Mary. She tightened up again and I was afraid she would burst out in tears. He didn’t comment on her drawings. He picked up her pencil and handed it to her. She took it and looked at him trying to figure out what he wanted.
“When you finish a drawing, don’t put your pencil down. Hold it in your hand. Think about its texture. Smell it. Let your senses focus on the pencil.”
Then he walked out of the room. It was five o’clock.
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