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Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain

38
New Models

I CONVINCED MERCK to let me present my project on the Monday after Valentine’s instead of on Valentine’s Day when they were due. I explained that my model had difficulty making time to be painted until the weekend and that we needed to film at a controlled time and location. He was hesitant. I played my trump.

“Um… I’m preparing a Baroque rendition of the Bacchanalia next. It’s pretty complex because there are six models involved. It would be really handy to have a second pair of hands on the video camera. Would you be interested?”

“Oh. Sure, I’d love to help out. Women?” I nodded. “That would be… What’s the date you plan to do that one?”

“I think we’ll do it the weekend of the twenty-third. None of these models will come into class. The whole production will be on video. In fact, I plan to project an image of Poussin’s Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan at the beginning, then fade into my own rendition. From there, we’ll have the figures come to life.”

“That sounds incredibly ambitious.”

“Uh… How do you feel about porn?”

“I’m not sure what the point of your question is. I’ve nothing personally against it, but I don’t think the administration would be pleased if we showed any in class.”

“Well, these painting sessions sometimes get a little rowdy. And the models are all… um… intimate with each other already. I can’t swear that they won’t get a little carried away in the excitement. We plan to just keep filming and use what we can.” Little lie? Not really. We just intended to use it all.

“Are you…?”

“No, not me, nor any of our crew. Only the models. Hope you’re good with that.”

“I think I can work with it.” He might have been breathing a little heavily.

“Okay. See you Monday.”

“Oh, yes. It will be fine to put off your Garden of Earthly Delights presentation until Monday the eighteenth.”

Whew!

I’M A GLUTTON for punishment. That’s the way Granddad described my relationship with seven women. It’s what I thought of myself when I stood outside the classroom where Blankety was concluding his Drawing I class Thursday afternoon. I wondered how many people he’d lost from the class after six sessions so far this semester. I was actually going to ask him for a critique. Fuck!

At exactly five o’clock he walked out the door of the classroom and I fell in step with him as he swept out of the room and down the hall. I felt like Harry Potter trying to get a word with Snape. Why am I doing this?

“Professor? I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on a project I’m doing for a different class.” He turned and scowled at me.

“You know my opinion. Sophomoric. Big dreams for a small talent. Too much focus on the reflection and not enough on the subject. Probably the wrong pencil and paper. Barely in a class that would be considered art.”

“If you would look at it, sir, I’d appreciate it. I’m trying to improve.” God! What an obsequious idiot I am!

“The indignities that I have to put up with at this so-called school,” he muttered. “Sit down and give me your scribbles,” he said as we entered his office. I handed him my sketch for The Garden of Earthly Delights. “Pervert!” he snarled when he looked at the sketch. “I knew that the minute you grabbed the hand of that disabled girl who sits next to you and worships you. She’s the only one in the class who has a real talent.” I was seething but I vowed to learn something from his irrational rantings about my shortcomings. “Is this what you really want? To dress up a woman as if she is simply a cunt waiting to be plundered? Ninety-five percent of the people on this campus would try to hang you. Four-and-a-half percent wouldn’t get it and the remaining half-percent would shake their heads and say, ‘too bad about what happened to Jett.’ The composition is flat. If you are going to mimic great art, you need to find the depth. Making flowers out of genitalia is fine but what kind of flowers?”

He turned to his whiteboard and grabbed a marker. While looking at my sketch, he quickly outlined it on the board. In thirty seconds, I could see Ariel take shape and, in a minute, flowers bloomed from her in the shape of the cunt garden. The only real difference was that he gave her bigger boobs. He tossed the sketch back on his desk and started highlighting things with a red marker. I’d been in his classes since September and this was the first time I’d seen him draw. It was amazing.

“First, composition. Making the flowers into a flowering vagina is okay as far as it goes, but where are the thorns? Where is the Venus Flytrap? Where are the bees pollinating the garden and threatening to sting? You can’t have the earthly delight without the earthly peril. Second, the depth. The closer the viewer gets to the work, the less he should see the obvious and the more he should see the shapes it comprises. Each flower should be a compilation of smaller units. And don’t limit yourself to genitalia. Free it up. Symbols of fertility. Third, focus. If you maintain the style through the entire composition, it will all blur together. Something needs to stand out. Perhaps the eyes. Render them as photographically as your little skill will let you. Let them peer out from the overwhelming backdrop of the garden.”

He turned and glared at me, shoving my sketchbook across his desk. I couldn’t say anything. He’d torn it apart and put it back together in three seconds. I barely got my cell phone up and snapped a picture of his whiteboard before he started erasing it.

“Redraw it and show me the new rendering in three weeks.”

“I have to paint it for my class next weekend.”

“I don’t care what you paint. I care that you learn to draw. Bring me a rendering that shows you know both the subject and the story. Then draw it again. By the end of the term you might have an acceptable drawing.”

I didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t going to argue or defend anything. I was going to try to learn what he taught. He wanted me to render this again and again. I’d do that. I picked up the sketchbook and walked out. I realized that was one of his moves. When you are finished, just leave.

BOSCH’S TRIPTYCH in the Museo del Prado in Madrid is nearly seven feet tall and thirteen feet wide. It must have taken forever to paint it and that clued me in on the scope of the project I’d proposed at the airport. I needed to get a rendering for that project done and get out there to lay in the base soon. Doing a project that big was going to be a monster task.

Doing my own garden triptych was almost as daunting now that I’d been ripped to shreds by Blankenship. I picked up the materials I’d need after my morning class on Friday and spent most of the day assembling the pieces at Granddad’s. He had a pretty good shop and was always willing to help me if I needed to build canvas frames or some other odd thing. When he realized what I wanted, he even used a router to cut notches for the hinges and then we both sanded the surface I’d paint on. It was three-sixteenths-inch clear birch plywood and I attached a one-by-two frame on the back to stabilize it. If it ever became a major work of mine, I’d eventually have to come up with a scene for the outside, too. The center panel was three feet square with the two side panels half as wide. When fully open, it would be six feet wide and three feet tall.

It barely fit in the Mini.

Before the day was over, I’d put a primer coat on the wood and was back to work on the sketch. If Sarah Lynn hadn’t slammed a book shut in the living room at two a.m., I’d probably have pulled an all-nighter. Some Friday date night!

“Jett, take me to bed,” Sarah Lynn demanded. “You have to be at work in four hours.”

“Fuck! I didn’t even realize what time it is. Thanks. Let’s go, honey.”

We got our teeth brushed and fell into bed next to Jas. My cock twitched when I thought about making love to either one of the girls, but we ended up just cuddled together sound asleep.

At five-thirty, I left the two holding each other and went to work.

I WANTED TO GET right to work on Saturday, but I was so tired after I left the grocery store that I came home and collapsed in bed for a couple of hours. I woke up to Sarah Lynn nibbling her way across my chest.

“We were too tired last night. Are you awake enough to enter my garden of earthly delights?”

“Mmm. Your garden is causing my stalk to sprout,” I laughed. “I love you, Sarah Lynn.”

“I love you, too. Now lie back and let me plant your sprout.” She pushed me down on the bed and straddled my erection, sinking onto it as I held her breasts. She moved with me in a gentle wave motion that brought us slowly up from our sleep state to full sensual awareness.

I was still kind of in awe of Sarah Lynn. She wasn’t the prettiest of my girlfriends, but it’s hard to think a girl who’s riding your cock isn’t pretty. She was as smart as all the rest of us put together. She was about the most daring person I’d ever met. And she was a natural leader. We never made a big deal about our decision-making process in the house, but if there was a disagreement, we automatically turned to her to arbitrate. When we came to an agreement, we looked to her to validate it. I’d begun to see the sense of her studying political science and wondered if the US would be ready for a female president with a husband and six wives when she ran for office.

She was in that lazy sliding mood this afternoon. She leaned into my hands and kissed my lips as she alternated sliding up and down my pole with grinding her clit against my pubis. And we kissed. I petted her breasts and moved to her butt. My hands slid up her back and around to her breasts again before returning to her butt. She pressed down against me, flattening out on my chest, still seeking my lips and my tongue with her own. Her movements and my own only amounted to an inch or two of withdraw and insert, but it was all that we needed.

And as we kissed we climaxed.

It wasn’t one of those screaming orgasms that were often heard around our house. It was more like a deep sigh as we emptied ourselves into each other—literally or spiritually. I held her against me as we dozed again for a few minutes in deep satisfaction. Finally, she pushed up off of me, relieving my breathing but also leaving me with a sense of separation. She looked into my eyes and kissed me again.

“I know it’s difficult right now. For all of us. But if we can all just keep having these little moments of connection, we’ll survive the term. You have big projects this semester. We’re all overloaded with course work. We need each other.”

I WAS IMMEDIATELY presented with a problem. If Ariel sat in front of the board for the painting, she’d be at the bottom and I’d need to fill all the rest above her with plants and sky or something. I wanted her more central in the vertical and horizontal space—not quite in the middle, but only slightly below the center. Of course, she was happy to help me. It involved getting naked and painty.

I started with her on the sofa and worked on the pose I wanted. I wanted a languid and inviting pose that said, ‘lie down on me.’ And I realized that in addition to wanting her stretched out and open to me, I wanted my POV to be higher, looking down on her, as if I’d just come across her lying in the grass. We moved into the studio and I rearranged things so I could lay the whole six by three panel out on the floor. I was thankful that Granddad had insisted that we needed cross-bracing for the center panel to keep it from warping. Without that, even as light as she was, Ariel would have cracked the three-sixteenths-inch plywood when she lay down in the middle of it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her in this position when the piece was displayed for class, but this was what it needed.

Once we were satisfied with the pose, I used water-based paint to spray around her and establish the shape of her body on the board. She was truly a little green nymph when I was finished and had to lie still until the paint was set so she didn’t smear it when she got up. When that was done, I had her body shape on the panel and I could draw in the line art without her actually posing until the triptych was done. Then I had to shower and clean her and love her. That took the rest of Saturday night.

“THE MODEL and artwork have consented to allow the class a closer view under two conditions. Please stay at least three feet away and do not attempt to touch. Please keep comments respectful. If you would create a line on the left side of the classroom and file past we won’t rush the viewing. Please keep moving though so everyone gets a chance to view the artwork.”

Merck’s entire class had gasped when we opened the triptych. Ariel had practiced dozens of times Sunday evening after the painting was all done. Of course, we couldn’t completely close the panels with Ariel inside but we had them partially closed as she sat scrunched up in a ball. We set the whole thing up on a piece of Astroturf and when I pulled the drape off, you couldn’t really see exactly what the project was.

Then Ariel unfolded, pushing the panels out to the side while I stabilized the piece from behind. When it was fully open, Ariel relaxed into her pose in front of the painting. She’d insisted on permanent paint again, but I refused to do that to her face. I cut all my morning classes Monday and did her face and hair. The result was that she was actually a kind of reflection of the scene on the triptych. I couldn’t suspend her in the pose in front of where her image was, so it looked a little like she had slid off the painting onto the turf, leaving her impression on the wood.

It took nearly half an hour to allow everyone a chance to get a closer look. I noticed several who made their first pass and then got back in line to see it again. And there were a few who seemed more interested in examining Ariel than the artwork in general. The comments, however, did remain respectful as people pointed out the various shapes that made up the painting and talked about how it changed as they got closer to it. Terms like ‘erotic’ and ‘sensual’ were bandied about but I also heard ‘indecent’ and ‘porn’ mentioned. I figured I’d managed to reduce the number of people who wanted to hang me to about fifty percent.

I also noticed there were people who weren’t actually in my class who filed by the painting. My adviser, Professor Wells, came through the line with Blankenship. Neither one of them said anything to me or commented while they viewed, but their heads were together as they walked out of the lecture hall.

When the class viewing was finished, Sarah Lynn and Jasmine wrapped Ariel in a robe and boots and a blanket. They took charge of getting her home safely from campus. I folded up the triptych to pick up from Merck later. With a huge sigh of relief, I headed out to walk across campus for Blankety’s drawing class. A tall girl with a tan, dark hair, and deep brown eyes caught up with me.

“Excuse me, Jett?” she called. I stopped and waited for her. “Can I walk with you? I’m Rania. We’ve never talked but I’ve been enjoying your artwork in class all year. Wish I had creativity like that. Anyway, I wanted to know if I could ask you questions about your art… mostly. Anyway. Do you mind?”

“Hi, Rania. It’s nice to meet you,” I said. She was striking. I wouldn’t have started by saying beautiful, but she was. I thought at first she had a big nose, but it was just that it didn’t have a deep indent at the eyes beneath her brow that most people of European descent seem to have. It ran straight and slender directly from her brow to narrow nostrils. Her lips were full and her chin made her whole face a little triangular. But not in a bad way. Just looking at her made me want to draw her. “What kind of questions can I answer for you? I’ve got about half an hour to make it to my next class but I’m happy to have company on the walk if you have time.”

“I do. What inspired you to do body painting?”

“It was kind of an accident,” I laughed. “Ariel, the girl in the painting today, saw me doing some pseudo Asian doodling with inks one day. She stood beside the painting and as we were joking around, I sort of continued with the ink over onto her. We got into it and by the time we were done, I’d covered her whole body with doodles. Some of them were pretty cool. I guess that’s what started it.”

“She just happened to stand by your easel naked while you were painting?”

“Um… well… We’ve known each other for a long time. She’s a real free spirit. Usually that means free of clothes.”

“I envy her. I mean… not being naked with you… I mean… Do you have sex with all your models?”

Holy shit! That came out of the blue. What was I supposed to say to that?

“I’m sorry. I mean… We haven’t seen all the women you painted live but even in the vids Merck showed the class, there’s a kind of intimacy and I just needed to know if a woman has to have sex with you in order to be a model.”

“Oh. Sure. I think I understand.” Was this woman saying she wanted to model for me? Yes! “My first models were all women I already had an intimate relationship with to one degree or another. Not necessarily having sex exactly. At the time. But it was much easier for us to get started since we were already familiar with each other’s bodies. But I’m expanding on that now. The next piece I’m doing, for example, involves three women and three men and I’m not presently nor at any point in the future going to be involved with any of them on an intimate level. Then I have another model lined up for later in the term who has done some posing for me but we’ll do a body paint scene after break. We aren’t really interested in each other sexually either.”

“Could I model for you?” she asked breathlessly.

“Do you think you could do it?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not suggesting that we would, should, or even could have sex but putting paint on your naked body is in itself an intimate act.”

“I get that. I thought about it a lot last semester and seeing your Garden of Earthly Delights today just lit a fire. I just wanted to be sure that getting my body painted didn’t mean I had to have sex with you. I’m sure you’re nice and all, but I don’t know you well enough and I’m not into random hookups. Could I?”

“I think we can arrange something for after break. Maybe you could come hang out with us some and even pose for some of the painters in my family. We can play it by ear and see if you are comfortable.”

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