Painted-tcl

Painted -- Ch 1

My apartment was cluttered with stacks upon stacks of canvases, all different sizes and shapes, leaned against each other, waiting to absorb a moment into the threads of their surface. Some piles already had color splattered across them, already a completed image. I didn't have enough wall space to hang them all, and nobody apart from myself seemed to have any interest in endless images of clouds, so it wasn't like I could sell them, thus they remained resting against one another. My friend Mille and her boyfriend Doyoung wouldn't come over as often as they used to before I became a painter. And it wasn't that they voluntarily didn't come, no. It's that I didn't want Doyoung to accidentally step on another painting.
I was very good at painting skyscapes, given it was basically all I ever put my mind to. Sometimes I'd draw another snapshot of nature, but whatever I was depicting was always something real, something in front of me, something that I could see.
As my bristles traced their way across a tiny canvas I had set up before me, working diligently to capture each blade of grass in their individual, unique forms from where they peered up at me from outside the classroom window, the heavy ring hanging from a chain around my neck glinted in the sunlight. My dad had given it to me for my birthday when I was young. He'd received it from his father, and was complaining that the gold didn't match the silver of his watch and that he never got any use out of it. My seldom took off the family heirloom, a firm believer that it bettered all of my artworks tenfold. When I'd first received it, threading it along a chain to remedy the issue that my fingers were too dainty for the undeniably masculine ring, I'd noticed my talent with a pencil or paintbrush improve. I'd expressed this to my father, but his lack of an affinity with anything artistic had him dismissing me immediately. He hadn't picked up a coloured pencil since the days he'd spent desperately attempting to colour within the lines.
"Samantha," my teacher said, yanking one of the white earbuds from my ears and effectively pulling me from your daze of memory. I dropped the paintbrush and looked up at him, a questioning eyebrow raised.
"Yes Mr. Williams?"
He placed himself on the stool beside me, gentling picking up the canvas from its perch and observing it in his hands. "Sam, you're very talented. I understand that it is comforting to repeat the actions that we know we are good at, but I really think you need to extend yourself beyond what you can see, beyond what's physically before you."
"Ok...?"
"I'm challenging you to paint something you don't have in front of you. You can look up reference images on the computer, but I want you to try to paint from your mind's eye."
He didn't leave much room for discussion, standing before I could respond and moving on to scrutinize the next student along in my row of desks.
My immediate reaction was to reject the very idea, but I quickly realised what he said was very true. I enjoyed painting skyscapes over and over and over again because I knew I could, knew they'd turn out well, knew the extent of my ability in the field. The idea of painting something insubstantial, something I couldn't hold and inspect from all angles, had me panicking slightly. I knew a task like this shouldn't be difficult at all, but its unfamiliarity confronted me with nerves I couldn't suppress.
It was this immediate trepidation that spurred me to take up the gauntlet that had been laid down in front of me with unbridled determination. I pulled up several reference photos of hydrangeas and peonies on my old laptop, deciding that flowers were familiar territory but the particular types in question were not, thus it was an appropriate starting point. After examining several different photos of the two kinds of flower, I closed my laptop and went to sketching. The motions of my wrist were not as intuitive as they may have been, was I outlining the shape of a cluster of cumulonimbus clouds, but it was not as entirely foreign as I had anticipated it to be. The bunch sketched well, and as the class packed up for the day I found myself incredibly reluctant to go home. I remained in my seat as the rest of the students departed, my teacher dropping a set of keys on my desk and imploring me to remember to lock up as I left.
I continued to paint as the sun began to descend in the world outside the confines of the art studio, the world descending into my favourite shades of tangerine and rosé as I replicated similar pastel shades with your brush, filling each petal with vibrance and adding shading and highlighting until I was done and the flower looked as if someone could reach into the canvas and yank out a real posy.
As I stood from my stool to take a broader look at the little artwork, I was actually rather impressed with myself. I hadn't anticipated my first attempt to be so successful. But even me, your own greatest critic, had to concede that the flowers peaking at me from inside in the canvas may as well have been pressed versions of the real thing.
I found my hand instinctually moving upwards to take the heavy ring between my fingers, rolling it back and forth along the chain as I considered the finished image before ms. It felt particularly warm in my grasp, but I assumed that was due to its proximity to my skin as I sat in direct sunlight, next to the big windows that ran the length of the room.
Feeling content, I gathered my used brushes, palette and cup of water and went next door to the studio with the little washing station. I took my time cleaning the pigment from the bristles, humming along to the music in my headphones. I didn't often stay at the studio after classes were finished, but I always loved the time spent there when I did. It was so peaceful and empty but without the eeriness normal classrooms would have, was I to find myself in them as dusk descended. No, each room was cluttered with art, leaving no room for the unnerving.