Mural
Thirteen
MY ALARM CLOCK on Saturday morning consisted of two incredibly beautiful women smothering me—and each other—with kisses. I think that when we fell asleep last night, I was more or less between—or maybe under—both of them. I woke up early once and Lissa was sprawled next to me on her back with my arm under her neck and her right leg thrown over my left. Melody was laying half on Lissa’s left leg with her head pillowed on Lissa’s left breast. I reached across and put my hand on Melody and went back to sleep.
At seven, I woke up to both of them giggling and kissing me. I was pretty aroused—what guy isn’t when he wakes up in the morning—but they wouldn’t do more than give me a little squeeze now and then. We hit the shower together and playfully scrubbed each other clean. This time when we stepped out of the shower, I was given the job of drying both of them with a big towel while they made the task difficult by continuing to kiss and grind themselves against each other.
We finally dressed and had breakfast. Lissa said she’d take me to the club for my morning Pilates class and then I was on my own.
“I looked at your Daytimer,” Melody said. “Did you?”
“Not yet. I know what my first appointment is this morning.”
“And what comes next?”
“More beautiful lovers in my arms?”
“Tony.” Lissa handed me my schedule. I flipped it open and saw the weekend assignment. I was on call to work with my Fundies prof on the mural from noon till midnight today and noon till nine on Sunday. I’d completely forgotten.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Shall I meet you after I’m off?”
“No,” Lissa said. “Go back to your dorm and sleep in on Sunday. Then do your second shift and get enough sleep Sunday night to get to your class on time Monday. I’ll see you on the court Monday afternoon. See? It says so right here in your calendar.”
“What are you guys going to do?”
“We ‘guys’ are staying right here for some girl time.”
“Lissa said she’d pose while I do some painting.”
“All day?” I asked.
“Of course not, silly. Only when we’re not having sex!” I’m sure my chin must have hit my knees when my mouth fell open. I could feel my cock bounce up in my shorts and threaten to escape. Lissa and Melody were going to spend the day together painting and making love while I was slinging plaster for my prof’s stupid mural. How could they? The image of the two of them in my mind, though, was so erotic that anger was short-circuited and my cock was rigid. Before I was aware of it, I felt two hands on my cock and two sets of lips on my neck. Then they joined me in a tender three-way kiss.
“That will give you something to think about while you’re getting all hot and sweaty with Dr. Henredon,” Melody said.
I smiled. Actually, the image of the two of them would be a pleasant thought while I was working. And I was going to be way too tired to do anything when I was done.
“As my daddy used to say back on the farm in Nebraska,” I drawled, “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I hope you two have fun.”
I meant it.
Pilates looks like a calm and peaceful activity. There are machines that help you move your body, devices like a huge ball that you lie on, no real weights clanging around or anything. The focus for me was core strength and flexibility. I had no idea how exhausting a workout it could be. When I was done, I hit the sauna and shower, got dressed, and went to get a big burger on the way to the project site. I justified it on the grounds that it would probably be my last meal this weekend.
I arrived a few minutes before Doc Henredon, who was pleased to see me already there when he pulled up in his van and had me help unload his equipment and supplies. We walked into the administration building where one hall had been blocked off and scaffolding was set up. It wasn’t monumental, like a Roman cathedral or anything, but it was still a big wall about forty feet long and fifteen feet high. The mural had been commissioned by the school to show the arts in action. I’d looked at the sketch and rendering. It was like one of those big sports murals by LeRoy Neiman only, instead of Olympic athletes, it had scenes of dancers, theater performances, sculpture, and all that. Pretty much everything that was taught in the college would be represented in the mural. It wouldn’t cover the whole height of the wall, but would cover the whole length. A four-foot-high wainscoted panel guarded against scuffs in the high traffic area. Dr. Henredon said the hall wasn’t wide enough to let people stand back and view something that went so high, so the actual painting would be about eight feet high by forty feet long and meant to be seen in pieces.
I was involved a few weeks ago on the weekend we fastened fiberglass mesh to the wall. After that, a fresh coat of plaster was applied and Dr. Henredon supervised every step of making sure it created a perfectly smooth and even surface. I had to hand it to him. He didn’t just hire a bunch of contractors to come in and plaster a wall. He was a stickler about every detail and students who worked on his project learned to do work that hasn’t been common since the Renaissance.
One of our most interesting classes near the end of last term was the debate on whether it should be done as a fresco, a buon fresco, or a secco. The difference is in how wet the plaster is and the type of paint you use. Doing a secco on dry plaster was a compromise between trying to teach a classic technique and working with the practicalities of being a part-time project with student help. In a lesser school than PCAD, they might have just painted out the wall with Kilz and then started painting the mural with interior latex. Doc felt his students would learn more if it was done in a classical manner. I guess he was right since I was standing there thinking about the different techniques while he gave me a tour of the sketch and the pencil drawing on the wall.
I started to grouse about the fact that none of the other student assistants were here yet and it was already a quarter till one when Doc stopped me.
“They will not be here until two.”
“I thought call was at noon.”
“I have one student with me for a couple of hours before the others arrive so we can get to know each other a little better.”
I had to admit that I was enjoying the individual attention. He’d explained to me what issues of perspective had to be considered when painting on a wall and that you had to think about where the normal viewer would be standing. The hall was too narrow to get back far enough to view the whole painting at once. Most people who viewed this massive work would be four to twelve feet away. I had always assumed that a muralist would either lay in all the background and then work forward, or he would start at one corner and work outward from there. I could see, however, that there were scattered pieces painted or sketched along the wall. So I asked about the order things were being painted in.
“Focal points. The wall was primed and then covered with gesso. We blocked out the wall in a grid pattern that matches the grid on the rendering at a 1"=1' scale and then roughed in the drawing on the wall. Now we are painting the focal points. These are the points that people will be drawn to as they walk down the halls. It is where I focus my attention. As they are laid in, I ask students to paint in the negative space.”
“But the rendering shows a lot more figures. Are you planning to paint them over the background?”
“Yes, exactly. The paints are technically opaque, but as you know, that depends on the consistency. If we cut the pigment with clear varnish, the background will show through. As a result, we can use the exact same hues for the background images and the tone will be reduced, pulling those images into the background and away from the focal points.”
“Wow!” It was really a neat concept and I hadn’t heard of other artists doing that, though I wasn’t all that familiar with murals outside of our class. “Will I be working on negative space today?” Even though it would be essentially flat, painting negative space was something you could see the results of in a short period of time.
“No, Tony. I have a special job for you.” Dr. Henredon led me to one of the five focal points that were still unpainted. It was a studio setting of a nude lying on a daybed and reminded me of something. “I believe you are familiar with this model. I’d like you to do the focal painting.” He handed me the rendering that he’d been carrying as he talked to me. It was Lissa. And I’d swear it was rendered from one of my sketches. Only this was at least three times larger than I intended to paint her. It was slightly bigger than life.
“That’s my… the model from our class and my sketch.”
“I always look through Professor McIntyre’s final project sketches to see if one merits inclusion in a larger project. Do you think you are up to rendering it at this size?”
That was a problem. The only reason I hadn’t recognized the sketch on the wall in the first place is that it looks a lot different at that size. I got off the scaffolding and took the rendering to the opposite side of the hall. I looked from the rendering up to the sketch on the wall and at last I could see it. The question was could I paint it?
“Bravo. You did the one thing most first-time muralists forget to do. You stepped back to where the viewer will be.”
“Do you think I can do this?”
“You are showing talent, Tony, and I have you for another nineteen hours. I think you should try.”
“But what if I mess up? If you don’t like it…”
“Then I’ll paint over it and render it myself. But I don’t think I’ll need to, do you?”
“No sir.”
“When you paint a mural of this scale, you begin by laying in the general tone, but only work a portion at a time. Follow the edge where there is sharpest contrast, put in the base color, and add the shadows while it is still wet. I know you have used acrylics before, so you should be able to mix these colors and control them fairly well. The tricky thing is that you have to mix a lot more paint than you would for a canvas. At the same time, with the gesso coating, you will not have as much paint absorption as you would on canvas. The plaster is pretty well sealed.”
“Yes sir. Does every student in Fundamentals paint a segment of the mural?”
“No. Some never deal with paint at all. Some sketch. Some sling plaster. Some will varnish the wall. But this year, you are the one invited to work on a focal point.”
By the time I was ready to start, the other two helpers for the day had arrived. Robert Bragg was a spaced-out guy I knew only from the Fundamentals class. I think he was studying computer graphics, but he always smelled like pot. Kate was a cute girl—the fifth freshman in our Figure Painting class—who was just plain stuck-up. I don’t think she’d spoken two words to anyone since school started. She was a good painter, though, and when she saw me working on the sketch when she got there, she got a weird expression on her face like I was a bug that should be squashed.
I did some erasures on the wall sketch and revised it some. It took a while because I kept getting off the scaffold and crossing the hall to look at what I was drawing. Part of the reason I hadn’t recognized Lissa was because it had been transferred to the wall so poorly. I had to work on remembering what it really looked like. This was different than portrait painting, even though I was painting a portrait. It was more than life-size and I was going to use a smooth acrylic paint rather than oils.
Acrylic has some real advantages. It’s easier to clean up with soap and water, mixes quickly, and is a nice consistency for brush work. It also dries faster than oil. That’s great for getting a canvas finished and off the easel quickly, but it can make wet blending a bitch. After I’d spent a good two hours revising the sketch I realized I didn’t have any of my own brushes with me for applying the paint. I went to Dr. Henredon to ask if I could go get my brushes.
He was working on the figure of a dancer at a different focal point. I got lost in watching him for a while. I must have stood there for half an hour before Robert made a wisecrack about me loafing while they were working. Doc didn’t turn or say anything. There isn’t a lot of conversation when a group is working on a project like this. Doc was in a zone. It was an unspoken rule that when an artist is in a zone like that, you simply don’t disturb him. I watched what he was doing and identified the red sable brushes he was using as he deftly brought the figure to life.
I could see what he meant by following the chiaroscuro or the curve of tone contrasts that ultimately define the depth of the work. On a canvas, you have a lot of flexibility in where you work, usually starting with the general background and working forward. But I could see that on a wall where part of a face could be as big as a normal canvas, you needed to look for drying points that were easy to blend and define.
I tore my eyes away from what he was doing and walked down the hall to where Kate and Robert were working together on the negative space. They were talking quietly together and I could see that they were doing a lot more than just slinging a background color in between focal points. The background was gently textured and they were doing a careful job, referring frequently to the rendering.
“You need the rendering?” Robert asked.
“No that’s okay. Nice job on that texture. Have you watched him at all?”
“No,” Kate said. “He told us to come down here, showed us what to do and told us not to bother you. What gives?”
Her greeting was none too friendly and this was more words than I’d heard her speak all year. Figure Painting is usually a sophomore or higher class and the five freshmen in it all had to present portfolios to the professor in order to be admitted. Needless to say, Kate was good.
She had black hair that she wore in a ponytail to keep it out of her way. Both she and Robert were wearing white painter’s caps. She wore bib overalls over a sleeveless t-shirt and you could see where she’d wiped paint on her pants over the course of several projects. She was pretty tall and nicely proportioned. She was working barefoot and I noticed her toes were neatly manicured and the nails painted a brilliant purple. Everybody has their thing, I guess.
“You should model,” I said without thinking.
“Yeah. I hear you’re into ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’ But I’ve already seen you and I’m not about to return the favor.”
“What?” Robert broke in. “Tony, you exposed yourself?”
“Naw. They convinced me to step in for a missing model for one of our Figure Drawing classes last semester. I wore a jock.”
“That’s okay,” Kate said. “I saw all I needed to. And his girlfriend’s seen more from what I hear.”
“Uh… look. Daniel Smith closes in half an hour and I need to run out and get a couple of brushes. If Doc comes out of his zone and looks for me, would you tell him where I went?”
“Sure. Is that our class model, Lissa, you’re working on?”
“Yeah. I’m scared shitless about actually starting to put the paint on the wall.”
Kate looked at me strangely.
“I’m sure you’ll do great at that like everything else you do. We’ll tell him if he asks.” There was a hint of jealousy in her voice. She went back to her work and it felt like I’d been dismissed and maybe even snubbed.
Comments
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