Rhapsody Suite
Twenty-five
I WAS HIGH ON ADRENALIN when I reached my studio. It’s funny how now I considered the lower level of Lissa’s house to be my studio. Mine and Melody’s. We had each set up our stations with all the supplies we needed, including lights. We were spending four or more nights a week at the house and it had become the center of my universe.
I was worried at first that we were taking the boys’ play space, but Lissa said she’d tried to get the boys to play downstairs, but everything kept migrating back to the living room. She’d finally given up and set the rule that all toys had to be in their room before stories could be read. As far as she knew, they’d never gone back downstairs again.
I worked from the sketch I created Sunday afternoon and laid out the framework for the painting on a sheet of watercolor paper. I’d bought five sheets, even though they were seven dollars apiece, because I was pretty sure I’d mess up one or more as I was trying to master the lighting for my scene. When we posed and sketched on Sunday, we used fill lights bouncing off the ceiling to highly illuminate the models. That way I was able to draw all the detail I could over the two hours that the girls posed. But now that I was ready to create a work of art, I needed to determine my light source and where the shadows would fall across their perfect bodies. When I chose a light source, I would have to deal both with the way it changed their curves and where their shadows fell. I couldn’t have a light source that conveniently left no shadow across a part of a particular girl’s torso that I especially wanted to paint.
It could be sunlight, moonlight, candles, torches, incandescent, or headlights. But all of the lighting information had to be added to the plain sketch. I could see it in my head. Therefore, I could draw it.
Mahler, Symphony No. 2. Paint on my brush, I attacked the paper in short bursts. Focal points, Doc had called them. Just a quick stroke to establish where the eye would be led. Six women focused on the reclining nude. The nude with her eyes fixed on me. Two unnoticed in the background shared a kiss. When the stunning vocals of “The Resurrection” in the last movement pulled at me, I could feel Sandra pulling the comb through Kate’s hair, loving every strand it touched. There were only highlights scattered around the paper. The pencil sketch beneath was beginning to disappear.
Grieg, Symphony in C Minor. The room began to take shape. It was not what I expected. I thought it would be a dark medieval castle. Torches would cast deep shadows. But instead I found a Parisian lady’s boudoir, pre-World War II. The men were off preparing for conflict—negligent of the women they would leave behind. The ladies entertained themselves in the rooms of Mademoiselle Katarina—a decadent 1930s slumber party. A fire burned in the grate casting shadows where the light of a lone lamp did not reach. Cinnamon, crimson, and tangerine colored the skin of the serving girl nearest the fire—her hips lush and round, as anxious for what the night would bring as her mistress.
Schubert, Duet Fantasy in F. Just two hands on the keyboard as I highlight the red of Mademoiselle Brianna’s hair, but soon a third hand reaches in, then the fourth. Sometimes discordant, nonetheless, the Melody plays off her twin’s flesh with her subtlety. Matched in body shape and position, one races up the scale as the other descends. While both are fixed on the same object of their affection. A hand strays from one to the other. A leg touches at the crescendo. Fiery red highlights on one girl are reflected in deep mahogany shadows of the other.
I was listening to Liszt’s “Csárdás Macabre” when I smelled the tantalizing aroma of fresh coffee. It was a delicate dance between two women fawning over their mistress. Sandra brushed her lady’s hair while Wendy softly petted her arm, smiling at the reclining figure. The Hungarian dance with its forbidden parallel fifths creating both tension and passion. The two ladies danced in competition with each other for Katarina’s attention.
I sensed Lissa behind me before I saw her. Perhaps it was the approaching aroma of the coffee. I smiled as I turned to her and welcomed her good morning kiss with the coffee. She mouthed the words ‘I love you’ to me and waved as she went back up the stairs to prepare to go to work. I turned back to the painting as I sipped the stimulating brew and picked up a hairline brush to add just a touch of deeper amber to the shadow between the cheeks of Lissa’s most exquisite butt. Then I returned to other figures as the music accelerated into “Csárdás Obstiné” with its crashing arpeggio as Wendy’s hand and eyes swept the beauty before her. Something in the back of my head was telling me that I’d just shared a passionate kiss and cup of coffee with the most delectable woman in my world, and had returned to painting without ever leaving my zone. She was a part of it.
I continued listening to my music as I ate a late breakfast. Lissa had left me bagels, cream cheese, jams, fruit, cereal, milk, juice, and more coffee when she went to work and took the boys to school and daycare. I moved around in my sweats and t-shirt as I ate and refreshed myself, listening and waiting. There was only one part of the painting left to do. I could see it and feel it, but I couldn’t yet hear it. I ate my way through Ravel’s Bolero, its utter sensuality washing over me to such an extent that I got hard while imagining the scene in front of me. Ever since that ridiculous movie, it has been a favorite lovemaking song for couples all over the world—probably long before that. But that was for couples. Watching nine naked beauties in my mind’s eye—not only as they posed, but as they laughed and dressed in their even more sexy togas—added a whole new dimension to the raw sexuality of the piece.
But it wasn’t what I needed.
I put my dishes and leftovers away with my eyes half-closed, swaying to the music—feeling their kisses—aware of their pussies pushed up against my straining cock. Living a fantasy that had been reality just forty-eight hours ago. My heart was accelerating as I returned to the painting. Waiting. Expecting. It reached its dramatic climax and then it was over.
But that’s not life. If you only live for the climax, then what comes after is disappointing. The intensity of the peak left me yearning. Aching for the next.
And then, it was there.
Softly building with mixed atonalities, raw passion, subtle overtones, shyness replaced by forwardness, allure, and intensity. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
I painted Kate.
A cut from the orchestrated score of Kingdom Hearts was playing as I stepped back to look at the reference photo on the digital camera and my painting. It always surprises to me to look at a photo and then see what I painted. I don’t paint from photos. I mean, really, if you’ve got the photo, why do you need a painting? But life, captured on canvas, is never what you see in a photo. At least, not what I see through my eyes.
The most obvious change was the setting. The photo clearly showed a room full of naked women, drapes hanging around that didn’t quite reach the ceiling, and even flood lights that reduced the shadows. The painting was a lady’s room in Paris. Just barely in the painting on the left, a fireplace burned brightly to take the chill off the room. The drapes on the tall window next to it were drawn, but a gap between the panels allowed late afternoon sunlight to streak through, painting a light stripe on the Oriental rug in the foreground. On the right, Allison had just come through an open door through which you could see a shadowy figure in the hall beyond—too dark to distinguish his features.
I’d switched Melody and Bree. I wanted Bree’s colorful skin exposed, but also, having Melody closer to Kate seemed right. With Bree’s hand held against Melody’s hip, she was the very image of desire—trying desperately to get closer to her near-twin. Adoration showed in the eyes of Sandra and Wendy as the only ones other than Kate who were fully face forward.
I’d taken a liberty with Lissa, too. Her hand still caressed the bread, but her chin was lifted slightly. From her position, she could see beyond Kate on the bed and you could follow her eyes to the couple in the shadowy corner where Amy and Sonia had their tryst.
Just a touch more color on the rug. A highlight on the elbow.
The audience on the live recording began applauding. I bowed and pulled the headset off. The subtle shift of focus helped, but no one who looked could miss the connection between the artist and the center model.
The style was much more fluid than my mural painting. This was watercolor and was looser. Overall, there was less detail, but the play of color and light, the crispness of occasional details, and the composition of the piece would carry it with much more emotion than the more realistic acrylic wall painting could convey. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. I used a hair dryer to make sure the paint was completely dry. Then I packed things up, showered, and called a cab.
“Title, signature, and model releases, if you please.”
Professor McIntyre hadn’t even looked up when I walked through the door. The paperwork for my exhibit entry was already complete save for the three things she asked for.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it. Your girlfriends all came in insisting, however, that their pieces be arranged around yours as a suite,” the professor continued.
“Girlfriends? All?”
“All four of them. I assume they are in your painting as well.”
“Do you need to see it?” I asked as I nodded.
“Good question. Do I need to?” She looked at me and handed me the materials I needed for mounting the piece. Shit, how did the girls even know what size it was? The foam core was cut to the right dimensions, set to extend on all sides of the painting by about two inches. Since framing art like this is costly, students all exhibited paper drawings and paintings on foam core and fastened them with magnetic posts so no damage was done to the piece by using tape.
“You have about twenty minutes to get that mounted and get it down to the gallery for installation. I’ll take a look at it later.” She flicked her fingers at me in a gesture to get going and went back to her work. I was almost out the door when she called me back.
“Tony.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Are you returning to school next year?”
“Yes, ma’am. Unless I’m not welcome?” I was afraid she was talking about my upcoming portfolio review. Oh man. If I didn’t qualify to return to PCAD in the fall, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be welcome at SCU either. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket. My heart started thudding in my chest.
“Good. I wanted to make sure,” she said. “You are going to become a popular artist overnight. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were multiple offers to buy some of your works after the gala Friday night. But you need a broader portfolio. Much of what you are showing is a variation on a theme.”
“What do you mean?”
“The painting in your hand…” She gestured and I thought she wanted to see it, so I brought it back to her. She simply laid her hands on the portfolio as if a mystic. “I see a nude. Ah, several of them. And what is this? Drapes? Curtains and fabric hanging everywhere. A low-angled dominant light source—fire?—casts deep shadows. How am I doing?”
I blushed and nodded. All right. She had my style pegged.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“You should focus your next term on bringing that incredible eye to bear on new subjects and experiences. If you don’t, you’ll end up being classed as a romantic portrait painter. You’ve honed your skill and your eye this year. Next year, you need to broaden your horizons. I have several suggestions regarding your classes next year. We’ll discuss it at your portfolio review on Thursday. That will be all.” This time she really was dismissing me.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
