More specifically, primary colours. Now, in terms of doing painting I don’t know any of the colour theory shit, I just slap it on, realise its shit, try again getting slightly less shit each time until finally it’s a brown mess, or slightly not shit.

We were told to bring paints in the primary colours (red, yellow and blue to those reading that are under five) and were given an A4 print out with a wheel on to colour in, like what five year olds get.

but I was doing remarkably less well than a five year old. My red, despite actually being called “primary red” was kinda pink. The yellow had run out totally . But the blue was fucking great.

I was very tired after a weekend away and was being a bit too groggy this morning, I swizzled the brush tainted with cleaned the shitty red paint but then realised I had nothing to wipe it on. Everyone else (as ever) seemed far more organised, with paints that had the colours in them that it said on them, jars for water, more than two brushes (I had brought only two, both massive) and kitchen roll.

I knew that no one would begrudge me a couple of squares, but felt all too tired and fragile to ask and so just stared at the now wet brush, trying to wring it out with my fingers and in the process getting non red red water all over me.

I eventually succumbed and asked someone for some kitchen roll, then only took two squares and spent the rest of the lesson rationing myself.

and this kitchen roll was no Bounty.

I painted on some of the blue, it looked good. Such a good blue.

Then the yellow, only I’d run out and so was leant some more by the teacher, feeling like the like the fool of the class again I accepted the yellow paint only to find it was all sticky and shit.

I threw it into my colour wheel. It looked oddly blue (a very nice blue, mind you).  It was now looking like a big mess, I’d only put the primary colours in, and not even started mixing, and yet the colours on my page where not the same.

Do you ever have those days where your brain is just making you more stupid than you actually are?

I just stared some more, feeling that kind of helplessness that those kids in class that always got things wrong and then just stared into space must have felt.

I wanted to go home, is that allowed?

I was then told that the wheel should have taken minutes and I should have been well on the way of the next task, to paint a skeleton (or part of one) using only primary colours, the yellow for the highlights, red for the midtones and the lovely, lovely blue for the other one… shadows?

I was leant some proper red and I started, as ever having grandiose ideas to what I was going to end up with, but somehow just drawing what looked like a very colourful shit on my page.

The teacher was going round giving everyone “Well done’s” and “I like what you’ve done here’s” and I just got a “hmm” again.

I aborted my leg and went for the pelvis, that obvious bit of bone that is a unique shape, it was so bad he asked me which bit I was drawing.

We did the gathering round and looking at everyone’s stuff and I just hid at the back looking in wonderment at everyone elses, just using primary colours can be great, but my brain just won’t make that connection.

I sulked home, on the way over the park I slipped and fell over in the slight mud, a proper wipeout, but felt lucky that I hadn’t hurt myself, esp with this marathon training to be getting on with.

then, after dusting myself down, I took a step and fell over again. Hurting my leg a bit.

Grr.

That’s the last art class yarn for a while, two weeks left of the term but some other comedy type work has had to take over from bettering myself (or making myself feel shitterer). Can enrol for the next term, but aside from obvious entertainment and standup material reasons I’m not sure I can see much point.

–

I’m running the marathon for mind – it’s going to hurt (but be funny) please donate some of that money stuff here http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/terrysaunders

The idea was to make a collage of the naked pictures we’d drawn a few lesson ago. We were told to bring a newspaper (weirdly specifically told to bring ‘yesterdays Guardian’) to make it with, along with some PVA glue.

Upon arrival we were told that we couldn’t use colour, only black and white bits of paper, so text, or B&W photos. I spent the first twenty minutes or so just going through and ripping out nice bits (and reading the paper, I hadn’t even looked at it since buying it in the newsagent the day before on the way to avoid a beating)

When I’d amassed a nice pile I commenced with my first mistake of many…

I seem to have a link between brain and paper missing, a truly vital link, the one that works out what things might look like before they are done.

With pencil this matters less as the eraser is my friend, on computers it’s even better thanks to the undo button.

Charcoal has proved a problem, with me drawing lines willy nilly and then immediately regretting the grey sludge on the paper.

I fared worse with glue and paper. Once it’s on there’s not really a lot you can do with the soggy mess other than let it dry and hope it catches fire or something.

So, I began with that first mistake, to do the mattress that she was lying on. I thought I’d be clever and use blocks of text going one way for the top and another way for the sides, making a 3d effect.

At least that was the plan, it actually looked like I’d stuck an article in a scrapbook all wonky.

Then i started to add the lady on, using tiny squares from a photo of a crowd, thinking that each head could be a strand of hair.That didn’t work.

I saw a face in the cryptic crossword and thought that would make a humourous head before cutting out words from an advert to be the arms.

It didn’t look as envisaged, unless i’d envisaged someone dropping their recycling on a wet pavement.

I hadn’t looked at anyone elses work when I decided to use tiny heads for nipples, and then, on my way for a coffee I decided to check out the competition. I was in for a shock.

the others had used the dark and light scraps as tonal shades (as I’m sure was intended in the exercise) and making proper drawings with it, whilst mine was the photofit of a ransom note.

I was so embarrassed I really wanted to rip it up and run away. But instead I made more hair by using strands of black photo but only glueing at one end.

When we did the group gathering round to look at everyone’s work I was dismayed to find people saying nice things about mine, they are clearly either idiots or liars.

I thanked them… then ran away

It was notably different form the previous couple of weeks as there was a) no charcoal involved and b) a naked woman.

I’d never done life drawing before. And as the woman disrobed in front of me I sharpened my pencil and tried to come up with some other double entendres.

We had a few exercises to deal with, firstly there was two minute poses wherein the model would adopt a (naked) pose and we had two minutes to draw it.

Whether this was a test of art skills or psychological profiling I have yet to ascertain as looking back at these drawings shows I neither drew breasts or head on any of them. Is this how I objectify women?

Well, partly the breast was a typical repressed english embarrassment. I tried to draw them on one of my drawings but the first attempt was so laughably carry on pert confessions of an art student that I rubbed one them out immediately.

the next exercise was again lots of different poses in quick succession but differed from the first excercise in that there was a stool (of the sitting kind, it’s not that kind of art class) and we had to draw one picture over another.

Good in as much as it makes you think quick, see how different poses give different movement etc etc. But bad in that what I’m left with is a huge scrawl of legs and stools that next to the first picture is painting me as quite the psychopath-in-waiting.

then it was time for the meat of the lesson, she lay down on a tatty mattress for the remaining hour and we drew.

Again I left the breasts til the absolute last minute at one point making eye contact as he energetically jerked my hand on the easel with (i’m afraid to say) my tongue sticking out of my mouth slightly. She looked slighty scared. but, in the reverse of the spider adage “they’re more scared of you than you are of them” I was terrified. Every time I tried to draw her face she looked like a monkey.

I looked at her, she didn’t look like a monkey.

I drew her, she looked like a monkey.

I rubbed it out, looked at her – no monkey

I copied exactly what I saw with my own eyes – monkey.

She was going to have to look at this. I cut facial features to a bare minimum and erased the banana I’d put in her hand.

As the lesson drew to a close I realised that I’d exhibited some classic diversion tactic by spending more time trying to copy the pattern on the mattress than actually drawing in a nipple. I think I need help.

On the way home, naked drawings rolled up tightly in my bag, I felt relieved that nothing too untoward or embarrassing had happened.

Then, after stopping off in Marks & Spencers to buy some bread I got distracted by a man talking to me, I pulled out my ipod headphones to be told I’d dropped something, I turned around to see a woman helpfully bending down to pick up the piece of paper. Then stopping as she saw the scrawls of a woman-hating killer on them

I grabbed it, ran into my flat, ate some bread and so far have killed no women.

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?

As I walked into the college there was a woman with a clipboard and a roll of stickers. She asked me if I was a student. I said no, full of that mock Paul Calf anger, “I’m not a fucking student”, then I remembered, I’m there to do my art class, that makes me a student.

I backtracked a little and she told me the teachers were on strike over something or other and would I like a sticker. I said yes, took the sticker, but didn’t really stick it anywhere noteworthy.

Now I was worried, would my teacher, the other terry, be on strike? I needed to draw something. I couldn’t just go into an empty classroom and draw, there’d be no feelings of inadequacy and failure then.

But Terry and the ladies were there, I called him a scab under my breath and he made me draw a stool, again.

Next week is charcoal… I hope I get to draw a stool

My Lovely better half had bought me the course as a present as i keep getting frustrated that i can’t draw very well in my animations and want to know how to do it properly.

So off I went this morning to go to school for the first time in about ten years.

Getting there showed me (as so often in my life) that I hadn’t thought things through, that the other people taking part in an art class on a tuesday morning in greenwich wouldn’t be other standup comics or other types of windswept and interesting people, but the elderly, wishing to better themselves in retirement.

A bit harsh, not all elderly, but i felt like quite significantly the youngest one in there.

I’d rushed over the park in clean jeans and a foggy head and so had no change on me whatsoever, meaning that I could buy a coffee… ho-hum.

But, I was then asked for 20p, to buy a piece of drawing paper for the lesson, unless that was I’d brought my own sketch pad. I hadn’t and had to cough up. Only I couldn’t.

so, already looking like a benefit scrounger without a proper job and spare time to better myself I had to promise that I’d come in next week with 20p, if I hadn’t spent it on heroin.

I was instructed to get an easel and drawing board and was leant a pencil and eraser. I nearly tripped over some shit in the middle of the room.

it was that shit I was to draw. Not actual waste, but a scattering of easels, chairs, desks and buckets. “To be drawn in pencil only with no shading or hatching”

Sounded easy. It wasn’t. The more I tried to get things in one part of the drawing right the worse other bits became, when lines that all started off in the right angles didn’t end up meeting where they should.

Maybe I should have used my own paper, not this voodoo stuff.

The teacher (called Terry) was encouraging to the others, but whenever he came to me he looked disappointed as I erased and sighed and drew and cried.

It wasn’t helped by the fact that the two people on either side of me were properly good and so my scrawl looked even more pathetic.

By the end of the lesson I wanted to run away, but we had to show the rest of the class our work. As everyone turned theirs round I breathed a sigh of relief, aside from the two protégés on either side, everyone else was as shit (or shitter) than me.

I am bettering myself by being competitive with the elderly.

I’ll offer another report next week…