Life Class (11 page)

It was one thing to teach a bunch of middle-class, middle-aged, middle-Englanders who
wanted
to achieve what the course offered. Whatever their previous history, at least they would be receptive. Instead, what he had here was a class of self-satisfied dilettantes who already considered themselves accomplished artists. They didn’t want teaching. They wanted congratulations. But no one knew it all. Any artist, however experienced, should be open to learning.

Even if
they
weren’t bothered, he was working towards acquiring the teaching qualification that his predecessor had refused to try for. If he didn’t achieve it, his job, like hers, would be on the line. He saw no alternative but to teach the course he’d been employed to teach. But most of them seemed to regard his determination as some kind of affront. They were above being told what to do and how to do it, and weren’t interested in trying new approaches and different media. All they wanted was a large light studio, a guaranteed nude model to draw or paint, and someone to oversee the process like their old tutor, whose notion of teaching was to give the class free reign to do as they liked, invariably finding something to praise in everyone’s work.

If praise is what they expect from me, Stefan thought, it’ll be a long wait. Apart from Dominic, of course. Dom was a special case; he needed all the encouragement he could get. As for the rest of them … Stefan had no intention of praising anyone till he saw a real attempt by that individual to break out of their comfort zone.

‘Life drawing isn’t an end in itself,’ he said now, his gaze shifting from face to face. ‘It’s just a tool to help you see. The end product is not important. It’s the process which is important.’ He heard some
sotto
voce
grumbling, but ignored it. ‘If you’re here to produce nice artwork to impress friends and neighbours, you’re in the wrong class. That attitude will only inhibit you. By abandoning your ambition to produce something frameable, you may actually end up doing better work.

‘Anyone can get stuck in a rut. Try to break out of your usual patterns. Today I want you to use chalk and compressed charcoal, which is hard to rub out so don’t even try. Be bold. Fill the sheet. Exaggerate. Accuracy is not what this exercise is about.’ He glanced at his watch, then looked towards the model, eyebrows raised. ‘Half an hour OK?’ She nodded and smiled.

In her early thirties, and with a loose mass of dark, tangly hair, Tilly was a pretty woman. The fact she was overweight was a benefit, and did not detract from her suitability to model. Given the approach he’d decided on, her generous curves offered more scope for investigating the form as a series of overlapping shapes. So far, Tilly had been their most regular model, and she liked to chat. Dermot, the model he’d employed for the first lesson, had been taciturn to the point of dumb. It hadn’t bothered Stefan; he preferred the silence. Chatty models didn’t seem to realise it was impossible to talk without moving. Dermot’s occasional erections never disturbed him, either. It was not an unknown phenomenon in male models and was just a minor drawback, far outweighed by the fact that Dermot seemed to consider modelling a part of his exercise regime, keeping rigidly in pose without a break, his lean, muscled body clearly demonstrating the surface anatomy.

Drawing the male presented a different set of challenges to drawing the female, and not everyone enjoyed it. Inevitably there had been complaints from some of the women in the class, who’d mentioned his disconcerting stare. Stefan guessed it was being confronted with male genitalia that had upset them, but they’d been too mealy-mouthed to admit it. Regretfully, because male models were a rarer breed and Dermot was new to the college’s list, Stefan had decided not to re-engage him.

Virtually everyone in the class already seemed to know and like Tilly. This was a relief – he could do without more grumbles. Because she was so talkative, he now felt he knew her nearly as well as they did. As a mother four times over by different men, she had, he presumed, a generous and careless nature. She was invariably late because she had to drop off her progeny at the childminder, nursery, and school. Her lack of vanity was evident in the idiosyncratic bundle of garments she chose to wear and the unselfconscious manner in which she removed them.

Tilly spoke. ‘Steve, Stef? Can you move the fire? I’m getting cold.’

Perched on a tall stool near the door, Stefan had been marking the register. Once prompted by reading the name, he was now able to attach the relevant face, and found it preferable to tick them off unobtrusively.

‘Sorry.’ He strode over to the fan heater and moved it, changing the angle. ‘Any good?’ Once Tilly was comfortable again, Stefan began to walk round the class.

He stopped behind Joyce. What he’d hoped to see was a million miles from what he was looking at. The image emerging on the page in front of her was like all the drawings she had done so far. The marks she’d made were pallid and indistinct. He could see she was using a normal charcoal wand, not the compressed variety he’d provided. The figure had been elongated – the head smaller than reality, the limbs longer, in the manner of Modigliani. But that was where the similarity with the Italian modernist ended. Her final drawing would be pretty, hesitant, and small. What part of “fill the page” did she not understand?

Rachel was using the compressed charcoal and the chalk. Her usual style was bold and flamboyant and she’d filled the page as asked. She’d even zoomed in on the central section of the torso so Tilly’s head and supporting arm were missing on one side of the sheet of paper, as were most of her legs and feet from the bottom. The curves of flesh were exaggerated. So far so good. But Rachel had then gone off on her own trademark tangent. She’d drawn the jumper that was spread over the chair, depicting its cables, ribs, and patterns until the whole image was a confusion of dots and squiggles.

Michael was quick to disclaim any formal art training. It remained unclear to Stefan what he’d done by way of earning a living, but whatever it was, he’d been successful so had time and money to indulge in his pastimes. There was no doubt that he was interested, even knowledgeable about art, and wanted to improve, but his drawings were tight, formal, and inhibited.

Lennie wasn’t using charcoal at all, but a black felt pen. The linear image was instantly striking but there was a dated quality to his drawings, which to Stefan suggested the illustrative style of the 1970s. The man had an undeniable facility, but where was the compressed charcoal, the chalk?

Mary had a thing about Matisse. She always drew in simplified shapes, which she then heavily outlined in black. Of the drawings he’d looked at so far, the way Mary had almost abstracted Tilly’s curves was the closest to his intention. Except this was her usual approach, and Stefan couldn’t be sure she was doing anything other than following her own star.

While standing behind Mary, he looked over to his next port of call, Francesca. What did he think about Francesca? Of the group, she was the one who gave him the most grief, having apparently elected herself their unofficial foreman. She was also the one who seemed most conscious of her image and the impression she made. Never had she arrived without full make-up. Her hair always looked as if time had been spent on it, teasing and gelling and spraying into that artfully careless style. Invariably dressed in jeans and clingy, low-cut tops that showed off her chunky jewellery and ample cleavage, she would then – thankfully – cover up under a man-sized, paint-splattered shirt.

When he’d first looked towards her, she was drawing. Then her head turned away from the easel, her eyes directed at Dom, not Tilly. It was several seconds before she redirected her gaze to the model. Stefan walked over. Her ability was self-evident; after less than fifteen minutes the figure she’d drawn was proportionally accurate. She had seen and reproduced the angles, the foreshortening and the negative shapes. She’d even achieved a passable likeness to Tilly. But that was the trouble – she seemed intent on producing an exact facsimile of the model in front of her. Where were the strong blacks and whites he’d asked for, the concentration on the figure as a simple landscape of shapes?

Next to Francesca was Isadora. What a name! Wasn’t there a dancer called Isadora, in the 1920s? Died in a bizarre motoring accident – something to do with a trailing scarf? Most of the students had opted for easels but she’d chosen to sit with another chair in front of her, the drawing board propped between her lap and the back of the second chair. She was stooped over. He noticed the pale curve of her neck, the bumps of her vertebrae beneath the skin, the feathers of blonde hair. But then she sat straight, raising her arms and crossing her wrists on top of her head. Staring at her drawing, she frowned, her bottom lip pouting forward. As he approached, she glanced up, dropping her arms. Wariness clouded her eyes.

‘This is so hard!’ Since the first lesson she’d rarely spoken to him. Now it almost seemed as if she were addressing herself. Distractedly, she rubbed at her cheek, depositing a swipe of charcoal there. Her drawing was messy and smudgy, a bit like her face, he thought, but she was the first he’d so far seen this morning who seemed to be following his instruction.

‘That’s good. Well done. You’ve really tried to do what I asked.’

‘I always do what I’m told.’ She continued to look at her drawing. ‘To me it’s just a grubby muddle.’

He’d been half stooped towards her; now he straightened and spoke louder. ‘Because
you’re
using the compressed charcoal.’ As he’d hoped, several of the students whose work he’d already viewed, glanced up and caught his eye. He hoped they were all taking note. ‘It’s messy and difficult to control, but clean and neat is not necessarily better. You’ve really looked at those rolls of flesh on the abdomen, and the deep creases that define them.’ He’d lowered his tone but a chuckle emerged from Tilly.

‘Do you mind? No call for insults!’

‘But it’s not
just
looking, is it?’ Isadora responded, as if there’d been no interruption. ‘It’s the ability to convert what you see into what you draw. I may be able to see what’s in front of me fairly objectively, but my drawing bears no resemblance to what I
want
to put down. I wish I had Fran’s eye.’

Stefan stooped towards her again. ‘Don’t let other people’s ability discourage you. As I understand it, your friend, Francesca, has more experience.’

‘Fran went to art school. Oh …’ She looked up, as if suddenly aware of him. ‘We’re sisters.’

Stefan glanced over his shoulder at the other woman, who’d patently not been following the last few exchanges. For reasons best known to herself she was gazing across the room at Dom again. Sisters? To him, the two women didn’t look much alike, other than a similarity in their hair colour. Even then, the different coloured stripes of blonde in Francesca’s jaw-length coiffure suggested the effect was chemical. Of the two, Isadora was the taller, while Francesca was curvier, but he was at a loss to guess who was older.

‘Your sister’s experience shows, but …’ He paused and momentarily wondered whether to get into the Art versus Talent debate he constantly had with Dom. He dropped his voice another tone. ‘There is such a thing as being too confident, too assured. However clever an artist you are, it’s still possible to get stuck.’ He thought of his own work then and the cold hand of misgiving clutched his guts. ‘
Anyone
can get stuck in a rut. It’s far more interesting, from my point of view, to have someone like you in the class, than …’ He glanced around the room and fell silent. His big mouth. Too often he found his foot in it. Sometimes it was better to say nothing than tell the truth. His gaze dropped to a sheet of her drawings lying on the floor – the limbering-up exercise they’d started the morning with. Boldly written in the corner was her name. Of course! Dory was the name she preferred.

She was still looking up at him, wide-eyed, presumably waiting for the dirt to be dished. The charcoal smear on her cheek and across the bridge of her nose drew attention to the golden hazel of her eyes. He breathed in, wondering suddenly where to go with this. Then she spoke, smiling slightly.

‘It’s all right, I won’t ask you to finish that sentence. Without naming names I think I know what you mean. And thank you – if it
was
a compliment?’

‘Well, yes, it was,’ he said, almost surprised. For once they were talking naturally, without the previous edginess and constraint. ‘You have potential. Who knows where it could take you?’

‘Not very far, I expect. Still, thanks for the encouragement. Back to reality. Where do I go with this?’ She waved her hand dismissively at her drawing.

‘I think you should use the chalk more. It’s not just for highlighting, use it to knock back the black, to correct or introduce more subtlety in the tone.’ He straightened and raised his voice again to address the whole group. ‘Light defines what we see and how we interpret what we see. But natural light is ever changing in its direction and quality. In a short space of time you can go from bright to deep gloom …’

‘A bit like life.’ Though she spoke quietly, he caught her eye.

‘By closing the blinds and turning on the lamp,’ he continued after a beat, ‘we achieve constancy. It gives us an unchanging source and strength of light. It allows time to explore its subtle gradations across the shapes in the figure.’ A few of the class looked at him as he spoke, but some carried on with their drawing. He had no idea if they were even listening, let alone taking his words on board.

He turned his attention back to Dory and squatted beside her, trying to view the model from her perspective. Heads close together they looked at Tilly’s ample abdomen. ‘See the belly here? It’s the area on the torso which is nearest to the light. Look how the light flares off that specific point, and then fades back very gradually as the flesh curves away from the light source, until it goes into deep, deep shadow in the creases here, and here.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I see!’ She applied additional white chalk to the area he’d indicated. ‘It’s so fascinating. Difficult, but I’m really enjoying it.’