Okay, here's mine. I timed myself for ten minutes:
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The life class took place in a high-ceilinged studio, drafty, shabby, and large, cluttered with chairs, easels, little tables, students in their dark coats. Broken charcoal sticks and torn scraps of paper littered the corners. Arnold found a chair in the semi-circle around the model's platform and waited. You could tell you had been here before and who hadn't. The experienced students nodded to each other, set their sketchbooks on easels, quietly flipped to blank pages; the others talked too loudly, laughing to cover their self-consciousness. Arnold didn't speak, but he suspected that his nerves were apparent to anyone who looked anyway.
M. Rousse entered, followed by a tall young man in a robe. Oh. A man. The young man mounted the platform and dropped the robe.
"A standing pose. Thank you, Jérôme. Fifteen minutes. Begin," M. Rousse announced.
All around Arnold, students got to work. They looked; they drew. Arnold put his crayon to paper and moved his hand tentatively, watching the line that emerged. He wondered how many of the other students were familiar with naked bodies--male or female, even just one naked body--in ways that he was not. He wondered whether he would ever feel able to raise his eyes.
M. Rousse moved around the circle of students, peering over their shoulders, correcting, saying little. He stopped behind Arnold. "Start again. Use the whole arm. And look at the model, not at your hand." He walked on.
Arnold tore out the page. He shook his arm, gripped his crayon. He looked up, at the model--at Jérôme--and began.
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I hope you don't mind that I jumped in on your exercise. There's something about the intersection of writing and visual art that I can't resist!
no subject
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The life class took place in a high-ceilinged studio, drafty, shabby, and large, cluttered with chairs, easels, little tables, students in their dark coats. Broken charcoal sticks and torn scraps of paper littered the corners. Arnold found a chair in the semi-circle around the model's platform and waited. You could tell you had been here before and who hadn't. The experienced students nodded to each other, set their sketchbooks on easels, quietly flipped to blank pages; the others talked too loudly, laughing to cover their self-consciousness. Arnold didn't speak, but he suspected that his nerves were apparent to anyone who looked anyway.
M. Rousse entered, followed by a tall young man in a robe. Oh. A man. The young man mounted the platform and dropped the robe.
"A standing pose. Thank you, Jérôme. Fifteen minutes. Begin," M. Rousse announced.
All around Arnold, students got to work. They looked; they drew. Arnold put his crayon to paper and moved his hand tentatively, watching the line that emerged. He wondered how many of the other students were familiar with naked bodies--male or female, even just one naked body--in ways that he was not. He wondered whether he would ever feel able to raise his eyes.
M. Rousse moved around the circle of students, peering over their shoulders, correcting, saying little. He stopped behind Arnold. "Start again. Use the whole arm. And look at the model, not at your hand." He walked on.
Arnold tore out the page. He shook his arm, gripped his crayon. He looked up, at the model--at Jérôme--and began.
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I hope you don't mind that I jumped in on your exercise. There's something about the intersection of writing and visual art that I can't resist!