Art Critic
1
Getting Things Straight
“WHEN ARE YOU going to fuck my sister?”
“I… uh… What? No!” I’d had my doubts about using Tricia as a model in the first place, but when she saw the painting I’d done of Kendra, she would not be denied. Annette looked up from her reading and made an exaggerated surprised face. Tricia couldn’t see her.
“She’d do you. All she ever talks about is what Art is doing and how much fun it is to hang out with Art. I’d do you, too. I mean, you already have two girlfriends. Why not add a couple more? Sisters. Think of the combinations!” Tricia shifted on the daybed we’d placed under the window. It completely changed the draping lying across her breasts.
Damn it! I’d almost figured out how the pattern in the fabric reshaped at that fold. Tricia was nowhere near the model that Kendra was. Oh, she was pretty enough, in a sixteen-year-old way. But she couldn’t hold a pose for more than five minutes. Kendra talked about her as being worldly, but she still came off with a cute innocence most of the time.
Unless she was talking about fucking.
“Don’t need another lover,” I said. “Kendra is my friend.”
“She said she was going to pose nude for you. You could do us together,” she giggled. “Paint us, I mean.”
“Don’t know if we’ll do that.” I looked over at Annette and she was stifling her giggles. Drawing Tricia was more like babysitting than serious art. Kendra and Morgan were off at the park to study auras with Mom. Annette had insisted that I needed a chaperone when I drew Tricia. I was glad she had.
“I need a break,” Tricia said. She didn’t wait for me to capture a photo or tell her okay. She just tossed the draped fabric down at the foot of the daybed and headed for the bathroom. She was in a bikini. We’d stressed that I wasn’t doing a nude portrait—especially not of a sixteen-year-old. I tossed my charcoal into a tray and went to sit by Annette in her reading corner.
“She has no filters,” Annette laughed and then kissed me. She handed me a tissue and I wiped the charcoal off my fingers before I put my arms around her.
“I didn’t think it was possible to talk more than Kendra,” I laughed. “And she can’t hold still. Thank you for chaperoning me.”
“Pen, I know you wouldn’t do anything inappropriate. But young girls sometimes have trouble separating their fantasies from reality. I’m here for your protection, not hers.”
“I don’t understand girls,” I said. Annette laughed at me.
Tricia came back into the room and went to my easel to look at the sketch.
“Hey! You didn’t draw me at all! Just a bunch of folds of fabric.”
“That’s what I was working on today. Different ways that the drape over a person affects the pattern in the fabric.”
“What do you need me for? Just toss the fabric on a chair and draw it.” I glanced at Annette and she winked at me.
“I just like to look at naked girls,” I snickered.
“I’m not…” She stopped and looked at us. Tricia reached for her bikini top and pulled it up above her breasts. They were nice. Really nice. I was glad my body was pressed up against Annette so my instant erection was hidden. Annette could feel it, though. She shifted against me, not helping at all. “There, now you can look at a naked girl,” Tricia said. “Could you at least draw me now?”
Annette stood up and grabbed my posing stool. She directed Tricia to it.
“Sit up here. Turn so your right breast is in profile. It will make a nice addition to the collection, don’t you think, Art?” I grabbed a clean sketchpad and HB pencil then sat on my stool, scooting up close. As soon as Annette took control of the situation and turned it into one of my nipple exercises, my erection flagged and I quit seeing a naked teen. I was in familiar territory here. And Tricia had beautiful nipples. As I moved closer, they hardened and popped out a long way.
“He’s staring at my breast,” Tricia whined.
“He’s adding you to the nipple collection. He’s got a dozen of them. Studies of the right nipple. Don’t pay any attention to him. He won’t touch you, but he’s going to examine your right nipple like you’ve never been looked at before. And he’ll draw half a dozen sketches to be sure he captures it in all its glory,” Annette said.
“I’ve never been looked at before,” Tricia whispered. A blush rose on her chest and crept up the sides of her breasts. “Not by a boy. Or anyone, really. I didn’t know he’d be so… close.”
“He’s not just a boy. He’s an artist,” Annette said. “Now tell me something about the real Tricia that I don’t know.”
Of course, my task was going to be more difficult because Tricia couldn’t hold still and each time she breathed, her ample bosom jiggled and moved around. “Art, you should try to capture the whole breast—especially the way her bikini top pushes down on the top of it where she pulled it up. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Interesting. Like it.” It was. I think she’d only planned to flash us for effect, but when she pulled the top up it rested against the top side of her breast and squashed it down. I sketched it and couldn’t help but think that the resulting indentation and bulge was a lot like drawing the folds of fabric. I didn’t think she’d find that funny, though.
Annette sat slightly behind Tricia’s left shoulder so she would turn that way to talk, but I noticed out the corner of my eye that Tricia spent a lot of time looking down at me examining her nipple. Her breast wasn’t huge and floppy, but was plump and round. The nipple sat rather high and pointed up, but I thought that might be the result of the bikini putting pressure on the top of her breast. She had very pale areolas—more so than Kendra’s—but her nipple was very long and very stiff. I studied and drew every detail.
I’m not sure what drew my attention. Perhaps it was just a jiggle. I glanced down and saw Tricia’s hand on her bikini bottom. She was applying and releasing slight pressure. I could see the area was damp. I only hesitated for a moment, but apparently Annette noticed. My girlfriend gently placed her hand on Tricia’s thigh as she whispered in her ear. Tricia caught her breath, almost poking me in the eye with her rigid nipple, but ever so slowly, her thighs parted under the pressure of Annette’s hand.
Tricia’s fingers delved a little deeper into the cleft.
My model was masturbating while I drew. And Annette knew.
I quickly switched over to pastel chalk so I could capture the mounting color in Tricia’s breast. Her extended nipple looked painful and I was sorely tempted to lean forward and suck on it. Just to give her some relief. Yeah. I didn’t, though. I kept up my professional detachment as I smudged the chalk to create the texture and highlights of her breast on paper. But her nipple wasn’t the only thing that was aching and distended.
Interestingly, now that Tricia was blatantly focused between her legs, her torso stilled. Oh, there was still the pronounced rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, but not the side-to-side twisting that she was prone to. And then she stiffened and I could see only the pulsing of her finger against her bikini as she held her breath. In a moment or two, she began to relax again and her nipples softened.
“Art, honey, I think our model is exhausted. Did you see enough or do we need her to come back for another session?” Annette asked.
“I… It was… No more,” I said. I got myself busy putting away my supplies and heard the garage door open. I wondered if Annette knew they were on approach. As I was flipping through the pages of my sketchbook to look at the couple dozen drawings I’d made in the past hour, I became aware of Tricia looking over my shoulder. She was fully dressed and wasn’t talking. In fact, she hadn’t said anything since well into her sitting. Even Kendra talked non-stop unless I was sketching a particular facial pose. Tricia stood on her tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then left.
“I wish my breasts were still sixteen,” Annette sighed as she cuddled against me in bed. I continued to suckle the breast in question.
“They’re only nineteen,” Morgan laughed from the other side. “Why would you want them three years younger?”
“I guess it wasn’t the actual breast so much as… Oh, Pen! Touch me! There! Yes!” I guess I got the right combination because she was unable to complete her thought. Or maybe she couldn’t say anything with her mouth full of Morgan’s tongue. It took us all a minute or two to get our breathing under control. I hadn’t even come. This time. Annette’s orgasm still left me breathless.
“Now tell me what was so different about Tricia’s breasts compared to any of the dozen others we’ve seen in here over the past six months,” Morgan said.
“It wasn’t the shape or her brazen exposure,” Annette said. “It was… a strange kind of innocence. It was like she had this brand-new toy that she wanted to play with, but didn’t understand exactly how it worked. Her breasts were the part that was… um… exposed. Pen did exactly what he always does, focusing on that couple square inches of flesh.”
“Not so square,” I laughed.
“No. And definitely three dimensional,” Annette snickered. “But she was as focused on you looking at her as you were on that little area. And it affected her. I saw her hand creep to the top of her bikini and start to twitch. I just ignored it and kept talking. But when I saw you notice, I put my hand on her leg and whispered to her that if she was going to do that while posing, it was only fair that you should be able to see clearly. I didn’t really pull on her leg. She just let them part and showed you clearly that she was masturbating in front of you.”
“I wish I’d been there to see the aura,” Fay said. “Do you think she’ll try to make a move on Pen?”
“No,” my Lady answered. “I don’t think she’ll even come back here with Kendra Friday. She got exactly what she wanted. She got excited and got a good climax, but she doesn’t have feelings for Art. She was just sort of checking to see if the toy worked the way the instruction sheet said. I guess that’s what I meant when I said I wish I had sixteen-year-old breasts. There was all that excitement of discovering my body when I was that age. Even with you, Fay. We’d kissed and just sort of pressed our breasts together and it was exciting. But I didn’t really know what worked or how. And the night I let Pen touch me in the backseat of the car it was like I finally found the power switch that turned everything on.”
“Are you sad that we have become a family together so quickly, my Lady?” I asked. I was worried.
“Oh, no, honey! I love what we have together. I love you. I love you, Fay. I would never want to trade what I have now for what we had then. It’s not my innocence that I want; it’s giving it up to you.”
Annette’s words about Tricia proved true. She didn’t come back over to our house again, though all five of us went out for dinner the night before she flew back East.
I should say six.
Kendra invited Les Dorn to join us. Les was becoming a fixture in our group, in spite of his father trying to work him to death during the summer. In addition to school, his dad was ‘encouraging’ him to get his real estate license. That involved another forty hours of instruction before he could take the test. I’d never met Les’s dad, but had the impression he was a domineering man. I didn’t much like him all the same. Les practically had to sneak out to have dinner with us.
Once Tricia was on the plane the next day, Kendra came over to pose for me. So far, we’d done pretty much the same thing that I’d done with her sister. Kendra wore a bikini and I sketched her. I’d already done about a hundred or two hundred drawings of her nipples, but we all knew we were working up to her posing nude. In another two weeks, we’d all be back in school for our sophomore year. That would mean less time for our casual sketching and more focus on our classes.
I wanted to do the same setting in which I’d tried unsuccessfully to sketch Tricia—lounging on the daybed with fabric draped over her. It was a classic pose, and I’d learned how to get Kendra posed exactly as I wanted. I just looked up a picture of a pose that I wanted to try and she could duplicate it. Of course, the picture I was painting wasn’t the same as the artist I showed her, but she could really interpret and hold a pose for a long time.
The picture I’d chosen to show her was Lev Tchistovsky’s Reclining nude with a pink robe. He was a Russian artist who lived in Paris through the rise of Hitler and the rebuilding after World War II. His paintings were always romantic with tons of drapery in them. This time I was going to go straight to paint rather than doing an extensive sketch. I’d learned a lot about controlling pastels and quickly working in the highlight and shadow. That’s one thing about painting drapery with a model. Once she takes a break, you can never get the drapery in exactly the same position. We’d talked and Kendra promised she could hold the pose for as much as two hours if I needed her to. You can’t ask any better than that of any model! She walked into the room in her bikini.
“Where’s the picture for today’s pose?” she asked. I pulled out the reference book and handed it to her. What I was learning from Tchistovsky was how to use the drapery more effectively to accent and reveal the model. His paintings were very sexy. I was arranging the drapery the way I wanted it, knowing that Kendra would study the pose for at least five minutes before she was ready. I had rumpled satin bedsheets on the lounge and had hung a striped fabric from the curtain rod that would drape down under her and then across her leg. I wasn’t getting too fancy with this one. I was still trying to get the folds in the fabric correct when there was a pattern involved. When I was satisfied that I had the pieces correct, I turned to Kendra. She was staring at me.
“This is it, isn’t it?” she said softly. Annette looked up from her book and just smiled.
“This picture? Yes.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she sighed. “You’re so sweet, Arthur.” She turned her back to me and lifted her hair. “Untie my top, please.” I don’t know why my hand was shaking a little as I reached up to untie the straps. I’d seen her topless almost every day while I was drawing her nipple. She didn’t take the top from me and when I let go of the ties, it fell to the floor. She turned to face me. I still liked looking at her breasts and all her tattoos. “The bottoms tie on the sides,” she whispered. Yeah, I could see that.
Oh!
She was just standing there looking at me. My hands were definitely shaking as I untied the left and then the right. She stepped back a pace and the fabric fell to her ankles. It was the first time I’d ever seen more than the top edge of the gold lightning bolt tattoo that pointed straight at the top of her slit. Kendra shook out her hair so it fell around her shoulders, still two-tone, but over half the length was her natural brown. About the last five inches was blonde. I really liked the look. My mouth must have been hanging open. Kendra was naked.
She took my hand and led me to the daybed.
“Position me where you want me, Arthur.” It was a phrase that Susan had used when she wanted me to touch her—handle her—as I posed her. “You can touch me,” Kendra whispered.
I glanced over at Annette and she was still smiling at me. I wished Morgan was here, too, but she had to work this afternoon. Her summer internship was almost over.
What I did now, I sensed, would establish a lot of my future relationship with Kendra. She was my friend, and while I could get turned on by her—that was obvious by my uncontrolled reaction down south—I didn’t want to lose her as my friend. I took a deep breath and then scooped her up in my arms.
She gasped and let out a little squeak, throwing her arms around my neck. I carried her to the daybed and gently laid her down in the position I wanted her. I took my time positioning her legs and arms, tilting her face toward me, and smoothing my hands down her body from her chin to her toes. I glided over her breasts and lightly across her mound, but didn’t try to squeeze or probe. Her breathing deepened as I paused with my hand on the inside of her thigh and looked into her eyes. I picked up the end of the fabric that was hanging down onto the floor and pulled it up, handing it to her to hold and moving her hand just into position where the fabric draped over her left hip. I stepped back and looked at her carefully. Her eyes followed me, but she stayed still otherwise. I’d never had any other model who could hold a pose like Kendra could.
I lifted her head and smoothed her hair out where I wanted it, then lay it back on the satin pillow. I loosened another of the drapes and let it fall in a pile behind her right breast.
“Are you comfortable?” I asked. “Can you hold this pose for a while?”
“As long as you need, Arthur.” I bent and brushed her lips lightly with my own. Then I headed for my easel.
I became absorbed in painting. I’d chosen watercolor because it was faster than applying oil or acrylic. No matter what Kendra said about posing as long as I needed, there was a limit to how long she could really hold the pose. She could remember a pose and return to the exact same position, but there was no way to exactly duplicate the folds and wrinkles of the fabric draped around her.
As a result, I focused first on the draping. Watercolor has its own blending characteristics and I found the shape of the fabric both easier to paint and less accurate. The hard edges that acrylic tends toward were muted in watercolor. My previous work had tended more toward trompe l’oeil, making it seem as realistically three-dimensional as I could. I couldn’t quite get that with watercolor.
I found myself less and less focused on the drapery and more on Kendra. I used a finer brush and captured the transition in her hair from dark to light. I touched the canvas to trace the contour of her slightly parted lips. I focused on the way the light played across her breasts and sharpened the indent of her navel. I regretted momentarily that I hadn’t parted her legs a little more, but I also recognized that as my own prurient interest and not part of the art I was creating.
Still, I hadn’t realized how incredibly shapely Kendra’s legs were. I wasn’t looking at them in full profile, but rather down at the tops. One knee was drawn up and the lush fullness of her thigh with the hollow concave where it reached her pelvis drew my eye and my brush. And I could see the shape of her calf on the other leg, stretched out with her toes pointed.
I had drawn her nipples a hundred times or more, but somehow adding color to the erect points and blending the areolae so that they transitioned into her pale breasts was almost like touching them. She shaved herself smooth, as well. I could only see the tip of her slit from my angle, but the lightning bolt that pointed at it held my attention. I knew I was aroused, no matter how I tried to ignore it. Kendra knew it, too. She was… desirable.
I hardly realized that I’d stopped painting. Sometime in the past hour-and-a-half, Morgan had come home from work and was cuddled with Annette on the sofa. Kendra’s eyes had shifted so she could look at me. She’d let go of the drape held at her hip and it slumped beside her then fell to the floor. Her finger had slowly edged toward her slit. Her breasts had a new rosy tint to them and her breathing was deep and a little irregular.
I was transfixed and couldn’t stop looking at her, my erection painfully pushing against my jeans. When her finger finally made it to her clit and touched it, we both came.
I sagged back to my stool and Kendra’s head fell back against the pillows, her eyes closed.
Annette and Morgan began to stir from the sofa before I did. Apparently, they’d just had a satisfying time as well. Kendra beat us all, though, when it came to standing up. She didn’t bother with the robe that was hung next to the daybed. She just walked up to me and pulled me off the stool to hug me. Sometimes, being hugged makes me tense up, but this time it seemed natural to just wrap my arms around her naked body and hold her to me.
“Can I see what you painted?” she asked. I turned her toward the easel and she pulled my hands around her so they rested beneath hers on her stomach. “Tricia said all you were interested in was painting the drapes. But you painted me. It’s beautiful, Arthur. Thank you.”
“You’re hard to resist,” I said. She pulled my hands up to cover her breasts and held them there as she leaned back into me. Annette and Morgan finally unwound from each other and came to join us.
“It’s beautiful,” Annette said.
“I could really see the connection this time,” Morgan said. “All the other paintings you’ve done of Kendra seemed a little remote. Not this one.”
“Well, we got past that,” Kendra said. “We can probably work together now without all the tension. Don’t worry, though. I don’t think either Arthur or I need anything else from our relationship. Right, Arthur?” She turned in my arms again and kissed me on the cheek. I realized what she was saying. We’d both had a lot of tension building up around when she would actually pose nude and what our responses would be to it. Now we knew. We were both attracted to each other, but even when we were highly sexually aroused, neither of us had crossed into becoming lovers. We’d simply acknowledged the attraction and now we could go on being friends. Plus, artist and model.
“Right,” I said. “I feel good about us. We’ll make some beautiful art.”
“We still need to get some more models once school starts,” Morgan said. “Kendra can’t work on her sculpture while she’s posing for two hours. That doesn’t mean you should stop working together, though. Just that we need to supplement.”
“I think I should get moving now,” Kendra said as she pulled away from me and reached for the robe. “I’m exhausted after that. Arthur, if you want to work in slower media, like oil, maybe we can work it out so you lay in the drapery during the first session. I can get back into the same pose even if we wait till the next day. It’s the drapery we can’t get into the same pose.”
“That would work,” I said. “If it’s very complex, I can even work on different sections. Like I could do the foreground drapery that is around your body, but then do the background drapery even after I’ve finished painting you. I learned a lot from this session.”
“So did I,” she grinned. “I really need to dress and go home now.” She picked up her bikini and paused to give Annette and Morgan a kiss on the cheek before she left.
Kendra spent a lot of time at our house and in my studio over the next several months. In fact, she became a real collaborator. We did several paintings that were similar to other works, but then we started experimenting. She got a real feel for the fabric and draping techniques and could see it as she would sculpt it three-dimensionally. It got to the point that she’d come in with a pose already in mind and take it. I’d make a few adjustments and she’d memorize the pose so we could work on it all week. While she had a good concept, she couldn’t quite see it from my perspective. Some of those were our best work.
In addition to posing, though, Kendra and Morgan would walk around campus looking for people with interesting auras. It was amazing how many students were willing to come to our studio and pose while I drew and Kendra molded clay with Morgan coaching her on what she saw in the aura. One of our most successful sessions was with a couple they’d spotted making out on the campus lawn. It was obvious to me as soon as I saw them that they had a great chemistry. They were both art students and had no difficulty modeling for us.
I’d been paying models $20 an hour to pose. I felt a little guilty about it because Morgan was the only one of us who was earning any income, and not much as an intern. She told me that we’d been paying models out of the money I earned doing the posing performance on Zen’s cam site. I felt better about it then.
Dean and Joyce were a different matter entirely. They were both painters preparing for their BFA exhibition and offered to trade posing. They each wanted the three of us to pose nude for them.
That was stressful. I was used to being on the paint side of the easel and not on the model side. I did it, but if it weren’t for Annette and Morgan, I’d have panicked and run away. As it was, I hardly said a word for the entire week before we posed and not much for a week after. It gave me a whole new level of respect for the women and occasionally men who agreed to come in and pose. I was pretty much awed by the raw passion I saw in the paintings that Dean and Joyce did. It made me look at Annette and Morgan in a new light, too. I knew I loved them, but I hadn’t realized how all-consuming our passion was for each other.
Susan’s girlfriend, Zen, posed for me once. Her pose was elegant and she worked well with the hangings around her, but there just wasn’t the connection that I had had with Susan. It was obvious that Zen was dominant in their relationship, but even Morgan and Kendra commented about how cold Zen seemed to be. She always wanted to figure out how to make more money from her posing and my artwork. The painting that I did, she raffled off on her site. It was a pretty mediocre auction. We ended up each making $75 off the painting. That didn’t even cover what I’d already paid her for posing.
Morgan was ticked. She figured she could have gotten $500 less commission for the painting from a local gallery. Zen never posed for me again.
My sophomore class schedule wasn’t bad. I had a figure drawing class to suffer through. Right. An hour and a half four times a week with a model on a platform with fifteen students around him or her drawing the specific thing that Dr. Robinson was directing that day. Expression, tension, gesture, muscle. About once a week, the model was nude and we’d study structure and position. Sitting, standing, lying down, kneeling, walking. The models weren’t students. The university didn’t object to students modeling for each other, but not in the classroom. That was deemed to be an exposure reserved for interpersonal relationships. The models in figure drawing were mostly older men and women who could sit and read or knit while we drew. A favorite, though, was a young mom and baby who posed for us. We had to practice quickly capturing line and form because the baby didn’t pose in one position all the time.
All I wanted to do, of course, was paint, and I had a Materials for Painting class that focused on really exploring the different media and techniques. So, it surprised me that the class I looked forward to most each day was my Sophomore Roundtable. We treated it like an extension of our freshman Lib Arts class combined with the writing roundtable. Annette joined our class and was lucky to get in. Everyone else had been with me in Lib Arts the previous year, but Cora had left school so there was a slot open in the dozen seats. We didn’t have Professor Leitner this year, but we did have Professor Denham, who had been the writing instructor last year.
When I walked into the class and saw the familiar faces of my friends, I just relaxed. The course emphasized refining critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and persuasive writing. I was okay with talking with this group as long as I didn’t get excited or upset. They were my friends. And every one of them, male and female, had posed topless for me during my project last year.
“So, what body part are you drawing this term?” Casey asked before class on Friday.
“Mmm. Not specializing,” I answered smugly. “Full nudes.”
“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to be sitting around naked while Artie reproduces my fine curves?” Mavis asked. That was it. As soon as I looked up at her I sprung a boner. I squirmed a little in my seat and Annette noticed. She reached over beneath the table and ran a finger up my cock. I’m sure I squeaked.
“Well, now,” Professor Denham said. “It seems to me that we have an interesting starting point for our first assignment. The human figure has been the subject of artistic study for thousands of years. We all have a body. So why doesn’t the university allow students to pose nude in classrooms? Certainly, we all know of students who could use the fifty-dollar posing fee. Yet the school persists in hiring outsiders. Let’s spend this session talking about the pros and cons of the policy and for your first assignment, you will each write a one-page position paper stating why you are for or against the policy.”
“I think the issue is bigger than whether or not students pose,” Dee said. “It’s really about social nudity. Where I was brought up, there wasn’t even a concept of it. I was raised to be ashamed of my body and to keep it well-covered. The school policy plays into that stigma.”
We were off and running on the topic and I started sketching the people around me at the table as I kept notes on the discussion. It was going to be a good year.
“Artie?” Mavis said as we were leaving class. She kind of had to wedge herself in front of me because Annette had my hand on one side and Kendra was leaning across me to talk to her. My response to Mavis was immediate. I just don’t know what it is about her. It’s been that way ever since we first met last January. I just see her and get turned on. It was a real task to draw her right nipple as part of my project last spring. Yeah. The problem was staying focused on drawing and not on Mavis’s nipple. It was all I could do to keep from falling forward and sucking on it.
“Hi, Mavis,” I said. “Um… Want to get a cup of coffee with us?” Annette and Kendra both looked up at me. We had decided to go for a cup after class because I had my Materials Drawing Studio last in my day. I think my inviting Mavis surprised them, but not unpleasantly.
“Oh, that would be great. You’re all kind of involved in what I wanted to ask,” she said.
“Let’s walk over to Hallowed Grounds. They have the best coffee,” Kendra said. “I can’t believe this is only the first week of classes and I already feel exhausted.”
“What’s on your mind?” Annette asked Mavis when we had our drinks. Mavis had managed to grab the spot on my left leaving Kendra between her and Annette on the other side of the table. Kendra rolled her eyes a little and grinned. I couldn’t help the response in my groin when Mavis’s knee touched mine.
“Your little studio and models,” Mavis said. “You know, the rules in the photo studio are even more restrictive than in figure drawing. We can’t have nude models at all. For some reason, if you are painting a nude, it’s art but if you’re photographing one, it’s porn. I really want to work with some live models. I was wondering if, you know, sometimes I could join you when you have a model in and I could do some lighting and photography while you’re painting.”
“Sure,” I said before either Annette or Kendra could respond. “Maybe sometimes… um… you…” Oh shit! What was I saying? Mavis grinned at me.
“Yes, Artie. Sometimes I’ll model for you and Kendra. If you want to, Kendra.”
“Hell, yes. I’m just beginning to get into the human form for sculpture as well. Morgan says you have a really strong aura. That will be good for us,” Kendra said.
“And there is no one at this table who doesn’t want to see you naked,” Annette giggled. “Oops! I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I think I’m putting that in my position statement for class,” Mavis laughed. “I understand posing nude for an artist or a sculptor or a photographer. I’m not sure how it works to pose nude for a novelist. I really want to read what you write!”
“Huh-uh,” I said. “It’s scary.” Annette really liked to write horror. And she was so sweet and innocent otherwise!
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
