Drawing.

2004-02-17 at 9:53 a.m.

Yeah, once or twice.

I signed up for the drawing class because Nicole thought she wanted to take an extra studio class. She's applying to be part of the architecture program at PSU, but they've changed the format there, and they do a portfolio review after one year. Which means, if you're like Nicole, you'd better start busting ass to put stuff in your portfolio so that they have something to review after a year because you sure as hell haven't been adding to that there portfolio before, oh, say, six months ago.

So anyway, she thought, drawing class at Portland Community College! That's the ticket!

Saturday morning!

For six hours!

Straight!

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

I signed up to go with her--moral support, plus, oh, I love art classes. LOVE them. Love drawing, love it all. Wish I could keep doing it without a class to force me, and one day I'll incorporate it into my life like some kind of artist or something, but in the meantime--I'm in art class and I ADORE it.

And Nicole's had to drop out.

Turns out her current class load is kicking her ass six ways from Sunday--no, it totally is. She's in the studio--the architecture one, not the drawing one--six to seven hours a day, often more, and has, more than once, emerged from the studio well after dawn.

So sacrificing six hours on Saturday to PCC when she could be, oh, sleeping? Not so much a tradeoff that she's happy with.

I, on the other hand, am as happy as a clam.

I've taken art classes as long as I can remember. Mom, in fact, has framed numerous art works. There's the Bear Eating Grass in some kind of paint. There's the Wolf, in pastels, and some Birds, in some other kind of paint. And I've got some abstract plants I did in college down in the basement. I'm actually quite proud of lots of them--I mean, they're clearly done by, oh, for example, a ten-year-old, but they're cute.

Saturday I had a particularly good class. I really really liked what I did. I just had one of those days where the lines turned up on the paper just like I saw them in my head and I was almost afraid to look at the paper as a whole because I really was *so* satisfied with what I was doing that if the actual work turned out to be boring or bad or all out-of-kilter, I might have cried. Often, I'll think I'm doing well, and then I'll step back and realize that the perspective gets all skewed as you move to the right, like a fun-house mirror.

My self portraits from the week before looked like either FBIs-Most-Wanted posters ("If you see this woman, do not approach her! She is armed and dangerous!") or like some droopy post-stroke victim, with eyes dripping down my chin. Andrew looked at them and said, "Who's that?" Worse, Becca said, "Oh, that one looks like you!"

But I stepped back, took a look. Her arm draped just right, the curve of her breasts cast the shadows just so, the drape of the background sheet... I'm hard pressed to come up with a time I've been more satisfied with my work.

It's also a little intimidating. What if I can't draw that well next week?

Of course, I think I'm the oldest in the class. There's little Chatty Cathy, who can't stop chattering and nattering to herself about her paintbrushes, about how she used to dance, about using this medium versus that medium, about the nuns in Seattle (wha-huh?). There's the weird guy who could be a Bible Salesman, except I think he's even too weird to be that, and he keeps bringing in awful awful music for class, like Kraftwerk and the soundtrack to Dune. He's like the five-seconds-behind guy from an old SNL skit, where he's always contributing a comment to a conversation about five to ten seconds late, after everyone else has moved on. There's the I'm A Young Rocker, Dude! guy, who's so damn enthusiastic about everything. There's The Big Wink, who slips in hilarious gay references into everything, conversations and art, and I think I'm the only other person in class who hears them and understands them, and I suspect he knows it. (How does no one else get the reference to Tom Cruise's beard???? How? Are they that young?)

Old or not, I really like it. Maybe one day I'll scan in some pictures to show what I'm doing. Till then, trust me.

I'm damn good.

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