The last fortnight of art classes didn’t go quite as well as the first. I could blame myself, or the teacher, or the rest of the class. But instead I blame charcoal.
Fucking charcoal.
Last week the pile of easels and stools had been replaced with some candlesticks, bowls and bottles, almost romanesque.
We were told to draw them in charcoal. Now, I have used charcoal before, but only to roughly sketch stuff out before I do something proper (when it comes to art materials I have horrendous 1970 type views – I genuinely have never tried watercolours as this part of me thinks they’re “too poofy”).
I sketched it, and quick, too quick, and not having the proper kind of paper (I was sick of paying 25p to the man and brought my own) I wasn’t really able to rub it out. Especially as I’d forgotten my putty rubber and had to sheepishly borrow one from the other Terry (who will forever be known as “The Terry what can actually not make charcoal look like shit”).
The page was full, I stood back, if I squinted and turned away from my monstrosity then it wasn’t terrible. We had another hour and a half to finish the drawing. Everything I added made it worse. so I decided, with my almost infinite (30 pages) supply of paper I could start afresh.
the afresh was just a candlestick, it wasn’t bad, and certainly saved my bacon when we all had to show each other our stuff. Some people had made things look so amazing in charcoal that I swear there
is voodoo or biro going on here.
I don’t know why but the best I can manage in charcoal is still not up to what a blind child can do with a crayon, and not even a gifted child, a stupid one.
But you can imagine my horror as this week I walk in to see the table laid out the same and given instruction on more charcoal drawing. I hadn’t slept much the night before and was in a really bad mood anyway, neither of these things helped my creative juices flow as I drew what can only be described as a drawing worse than genocide.
Teacher Terry was giving everyone else “well done’s” and “try this” as he did his rounds, but to me he could just sigh,
I wondered, as I’m paying for this, surely I should have paid for the right to be not sighed at.
But apparently not.
Ah well, next week we have a life model. How can that possibly go wrong?