Open Studio

This past Saturday was a perfect day.  The weather was divine, as if the Kansas air was sighing with relief after such a difficult summer.  The green in the trees was actively yielding to those reds and yellows which have been hiding away.

Sara's Yard Sale

I called on Sara, who was having a yard sale under a big white canopy.  I accidentally chased a customer away who was low balling the price of a lovely sheepskin throw rug, which is now hanging on my rocking chair.  I was given hot Darjeeling by my hostess, and another friend, Lora, joined me.  The two of us sat in Sara's beach furniture and sketched the yard sale, sipping tea. Sara's twins surveyed the neighborhood from the ground on a scooter and from above in a redbud tree.

Via Flickr: Instructor William Merritt Chase
is pictured in the photo.  Photographed by either
Joseph Byron or his son Percy Claude.

Chase, William Merritt, 1849-1916

Lora and I finished our tea and moved onto part two of our outing -- Open Studio at the University of Kansas.  In our chatter, Lora lost her way, but eventually she found Jayhawk Boulevard and the Fine Arts building.  Here, we made our way through hallways, past sculptures and murals, and up a staircase to a big room filled with easels and people.  Without making eye contact, the proctor who greeted us asked, "are you high school students?" and Lora humorously mumbled something about her gray hair.  The proctor offered us some skewers for holding up between ourselves and the model to get more accurate scale and proportion.  I declined, confident I wouldn't need such a thing.  We signed in and found some empty seats.  Lora gave me a banana from her purse, which was exactly what I needed to calm the Darjeeling running through my veins.

 At the front of the room was the pink and bald nude model.  He took his place and set a timer for 15 minutes.  I started sketching, self-assured that whatever came of this would be good.  And without the aid of any instruction every stroke of my pencil -- and even of the eraser -- was actually perfect!  Fifteen minutes passed, and the model moved into a second pose.  I came out of my deluded trance.  In the back of my mind, I could hear the Fear of Failure begging the man not to look in my direction.  In the front of my mind, I could see a pink man made of triangles, rectangles, circles, shadows and highlights.  I focused on those.  I drew those.

At the end of two 15 minute sessions, the model took a break, and I had a chance to tell Lora, "I've never done this before!"  I've never taken a figure drawing class, or spent much time studying how to draw the human form.  I've never been in a human anatomy class.  But here I was, drawing something that looked like that pink man in front of me.

Lora and I decided we would stay for one more pose.  As the model took his place, I could hear that background voice again, dreading the chance that I might have to draw his penis, and would I avoid it altogether or treat it like more circles and squares?  He reclined on some boxes and chairs covered in a dark blue sheet.  The timer was set for 30 minutes.  As before, I started with the oval head, gave him some generally rectangular body shapes, added some ovals for legs.  For a moment, I wished I'd taken the proctor up on his offer of a skewer, but then I discovered my pencil served the same purpose.  

Without thinking the words, but drawing them, "lines, shapes, shadows, highlights...lines, shapes, shadows, highlights," became my meditation.  As with any meditation, it was casually interrupted by thoughts like, "his legs are so skinny," "what's going on with his toes?" and, "is this perspective off?"  But those thoughts were put aside for the work of pushing the pencil and eraser around on the page, smearing the graphite with my finger to blur edges, and letting the day take its course.