[Let's make] Art [Something beautiful]

[Ayu]

Giovanni looked up from his canvas at the ornate clock on the wall. Joy. Time to tear himself away from his personal bubble and teach some unruly teenage boys. Ah well, such was the way the world worked. And his class were definitely improving.
He washed his brush in a jar of turps, covered his palette to preserve the paints and lifted the wet painting off the easel, placing it on the windowsill to dry as his students began to trickle in.
As soon as he judged that the majority of the clas were present, he cleared his throat. "Good afternoon, people. Um...since we're currently working on portraiture, I've come up with this task to improve the...um, specificity, I suppose, of your work. For example, look at this." He held up a random painting from another class. "It looks like a person, doesn't it? But could you say who it was meant to be? That's the important thing, when you're trying to create a portrait."
He turned to the board, spent several minutes looking for the chalk for the board and eventually dived into the art supplies box for white chalk and wrote on the board in neat block capitals "RANDOM FACES".
"Look around the classroom. Find a face you want to draw. Select no more than three coloured chalk pastels, one piece of charcoal and one piece of chalk. And then I want you to draw that person. Miss out their hair, just draw their faces. Don't say who you're drawing, don't make it obvious. You can move to a better angle if you prefer." He grinned. "At the end of the class, we'll see whose portraits are recognisable. Hmm...let's say that if someone selected at random can identify your subject, you get a prize."
He dug around on his cluttered desk to find a couple of large wooden boxes containing almost every shade of chalk pastel imaginable. Flicking the catches, he placed them open on the nearest table, along with a box of white chalk and another of charcoal. He opened the cupboard and dumped a pile of black paper on the same table.
He held up a red, a gold and a terracotta pastel and said, "If anyone needs help with technique, I'll show you over here. Just gather round."

[Tsubasa]

The blond boy sighed.

This wasn't exactly his area of expertise. But whatever, he had to do his best. Even if his best wasn't that great at all.

Grabbing some paper and charcoal, he set it down and then continued to look around the class for an interesting face. Who could he draw? Well, if he had a choice, he would much rather draw his friend Gabe. But it seemed the boy wasn't here for this class, so he chose another option. Looking into the distance, he found a chubby person with a long nose....Well...That looked interesting. He guessed.

Picking up the charcoal, he squinted his eyes and started to make an outline of the face. It was slightly roundish, with floppy cheekbones--if you could see them at all. Seth chose to draw lightly at first, in case he wanted to redo it. Then, after the outline he sketched a faint placement of what seemed was going to be the nose, and then two lines for the eyebrows. This would help with the overall placement of the face. Scratching his face, he stuck his tongue out and tried making small slanted ovals for the eyes.

Well, that failed. They looked more like large circles. Roughly erasing that with his finger, he scratched his face again before realizing that his fingers were caked with black smudge....Crap. Taking out a small mirror that he carried, sure enough his face was covered in black smears, and with sighing, he walked over to the sink...

This was turning out to be a great art class indeed.

[inspectorjavs]

((NOTE: please ignore major suckage of following post.))

Lou Bishop was currently a seasoned actor, ensconced in the shallow role of Mr. Llewelyn Paul Aquila Bishop, angel and honor student. His chin was raised just so, his cornflower eyes wide and alert; his posture was attentive, hands folded, spine straightened. A single golden brow was arched, and as it was prone to conveying many different emotions, its curve now hinted to curiosity and interest in what Mr. was speaking of.

Truthfully, Lou needed a cigarette. Desperately.

Such a desire was born, however, moreso of boredom than necessity. He had some skill at art–surely nothing to promote him from angel to prodigy, but enough to be deemed mediocre–but it was not something he enjoyed. Sketching pretty curves and lines, forming pretty sculptures, critiquing pretty pictures were activities that he could tolerate at best. At worst, he was very nearly compelled to bolt from the class. Now, he was somewhere in between–relatively comfortable but severely bored.

Of course, Mr. Llewelyn Paul Aquila Bishop, angel and honor student, would never harbor such ill sentiments. Therefore, the pack of cigarettes in his pocket was (outwardly) ignored, and Lou was allotted to only give a barely audible sigh of boredom.

Portraiture? Lou blinked, but in such a fashion that it seemed to be a blink of intrigue. Inside, he was gagging. Having to stare intently–albeit discreetly, but what difference did it make?–at a face that was definitely not female was not an activity that he wished to engage in. Rising from his seat, Lou set one palm upon the table, shifted his weight onto it, and surveyed the room, searching for a face that he could stand to explore every crevice of–in short, a face that he had not punched before, or scornfully directed his cigarette smork toward, or a face that was not loathed by any of his friends.

This was going to be a difficult assignment for both Mr. Llewelyn Paul Aquila Bishop, angel and honor student, and Lou.

[bryna]

Dai grinned, grabbing three pastels at random and almost running back towards where he sat. Hm... faces, faces, faces...

What sort of face?

He didn't want to draw any of the other people in the class. They were all boring. They had none of what Gwilym had called character. Well... maybe he could draw Gwilym?

No, he decided. Gwilym was too difficult, all cracks and crevices and the marks of forty-odd years' hard living. Rhys, then? If he drew Rhys, he could take it back with him at Christmas, and show them, and then give it to Rhys to hang up...

No. Rhys would just laugh at it if it was bad, and it would be bad, because it was his first try. And if Rhys laughed at him as soon as he got back, then it wouldn't be the same afterwards. No, it had to be somebody else. Somebody he could draw.

He thought for a long time, tapping his fingernail restlessly against his teeth. He thought about running on the clifftops, and about Gwilym, and about Rhys, and about his sisters, and about Angelsey.

About ten minutes later, he blinked and shook his head, a slow grin spreading across his face. Yes, that should do it...

He would draw Ceridwen.

Singing softly under his breath - a Welsh lullaby that had been running through his head all day - he picked up the chalk, sketching with a speed and accuracy that was almost disconcerting in a twelve-year-old. Eyes... nose... ears... and then hair, despite what Giovanni had said, and then the quick lines to fill in the cliffs of Angelsey in the background, and then he set his attention to shading what was now, to any casual observer, immediately obvious as a sheep.

[Ayu]

Giovanni wandered the classroom, peering over student's shoulders. Truthfully, he just wanted to join them, but that wasn't an option for a man knocking on thirty. He had to earn his paycheck.

"Hmmm...Seth, don't draw guidelines, alright? Look at the face line by line. Deconstruct it. It's just a collection of shapes, you know. Everything is." He moved on. "Frank, you need more of the shape of the face. An oval isn't enough. Is my face the same shape as yours?"

"Jack, excellent. But I did say not to draw in the hair. A good start, though."

"Thomas, please try to finish placing things before you start shading."

"Dai..." The Italian man stopped at the boy's desk. "Is it just me, or is that a sheep?" He brushed his wild curls out of his eyes and blinked at it. "It's a very nice sheep, Dai, but I did, um, ask you to draw a person in this room..."

[bryna]

((Gio is Mr Chapman, isn't he? Isn't he?))

"Beth ddeudaist? Gwnawn mo chlyw beth bu ddeudaist. Arluniwn, a..." Dai started, without really registering where he was or who he was talking to, blinked, apparently only now surfacing from his own absorption in his sketching, and looked up at Giovanni, his eyes very large in his narrow brown face.

"It is a person," he said mildly after a moment of internal translation, putting the chalks down. "It's Ceridwen. I know she's not in the classroom, but everyone in here's boring to draw. And difficult," he added as an afterthought, picking up his charcoal again and working on one of Ceridwen's eyes. "I was going to draw Gwilym or Rhys," he added, glancing up over his shoulder, "only Rhys would just be silly about it, and I didn't think I could draw Gwilym. So I drew Ceridwen instead."

He picked up the drawing, looking it over critically. "It's not that bad, though, is it? I mean, you can tell it's Ceridwen, well, you probably can't, because you've never been to Angelsey, but it does look like Ceridwen. Not quite, but I mean, I don't usually draw people." He talked quickly, as he always did, as though his words were fighting to get out of his mouth first.[/color]

[Ayu]

"But you have to draw the things you find difficult," the teacher told him mildly. "If you can draw..." he had a stab at the Welsh name "...Seridwen easily, then that's wonderful. I know you're a good landscape artist, Dai, and a good animal portraitist. But surely the point of learning is to try new things?"

In a way, Giovanni sympathised with the Welsh boy. He himself wasn't good at drawing what he was told. It was why he had given up professional art.

"It is a very good picture," he conceded. "Although I can't tell the difference between sheep myself. I'm a city boy, you know? But I think if you showed me a lot of sheep I might be able to pick out this one."

[bryna]

"Ceridwen," Dai corrected him helpfully. "Ceri-edw-yen. Should I try drawing Gwilym, then? If I need to draw things I don't know how to draw? Everyone in here looks the same, they're all boring. I think it's because there are so many saesnae in here. Rhys says all the saesnae he's seen look the same, and that's why the Cymri are better, because we all look different, and we all are different, but a saesneg is just English." He grinned brightly, looking around the classroom.

"I can keep this picture, though, right?" he added, pointing to the sketch he had already done. "I can give it to Gwilym and Rhys when I go home, then. They know what Ceridwen looks like." He said it almost accusingly, as though it was somehow Giovanni's fault for not being Welsh; for being, in his own words, a city boy.[/size]

[Ayu]

"I'm not English," Giovanni pointed out mildly, his sole concession to national pride. "I'm Italian. And these people don't look the same. No two people look the same, Dai. Not even identical twins. You aren't looking right." He found a stub of a pencil in his shirt pocket and pulled over a bit of paper, drawing a few lines. First he slashed out a quick, line-only, stylised picture of Dai, and then the same of himself, and then one of Seth, and one of the dark-haired boy who sat by the door. "See? The shapes are different, the expressions are different, everything about them is different."

He pushed back his messy hair again with a sigh. "Of course. But Dai, next time please just come to the art room at lunchtime to draw sheep. Please. And just try. Draw somebody in this room, and if you like I'll give you tutoring at lunchtimes." That was a bit of a sacrifice. Lunchtimes were when Giovanni drew.

[bryna]

Dai shook his head. "No, I don't want tutoring, thank you. Not at lunchtimes," he said politely. "Lunchtimes are when I run. I'd rather run than draw. But thank you."

"I am trying," he added after a moment, as though he was worried that Giovanni might think otherwise. "I just can't see faces like that. I don't look at faces." He'd put down his charcoal, now, and was gesticulating with both hands. "It's... it's, um, how people stand and how they walk and... cach, I cannot explain it... um..." Grabbing the drawing that Giovanni had done of himself, he picked up a random pastel and sketched quickly, a rough figure of the teacher as he stood; no face, no features, just the shape.

"That looks more like you," he said finally, and firmly, tapping his own drawing. "To me, anyway. It looks more like you because you stand like that and you hold yourself like that but your face isn't like that because it changes. The way people hold themselves doesn't change unless they make it."

[Ayu]

"Fair enough," Giovanni replied, although it was incomprehensible to him. Who on earth would rather go out and run around aimlessly than make beautiful things? The outside was there as a backdrop and an inspiration and a subject, not as a toy.

"That's how you see people?" he asked, interested. And slightly surprised, because surely he didn't slouch that much, right? "It's interesting, Dai, but look, I'm trying to expand your view, so I'm not saying you can't draw what you want and I'm not saying you can't draw how you want and I love that you're so sure about it all. But the more you learn, the more options you have, you know?"

After a moment's consideration, he turned around to the freestanding bookshelf that was swamped in those paintings that hadn't fitted around the walls, with student's work drying on top of each row of books. He tutted to himself and ran a finger along the books, leaving a trail of coloured chalk behind his dusty finger. "There are some twentieth and twenty-second century artists I'd like you to have a look at, Dai, vis-a-vis figure drawing."[/size]

[bryna]

Dai groaned. Books. He hated books.

"I don't like copying other people, though," he whined. "Things are how they are. How'm I supposed to draw things I don't see? I know what places look like, because I see them. But if I can't see what they're drawing from, how'm I supposed to know what they're saying about it? Anyway," he added as an afterthought, "reading's boring. I joined up for art to draw. I like drawing. I love drawing. But I don't want to read about it. Drawing... It comes from here." He pointed to his eyes, then to his heart. "Not here." He pointed to his head this time. "Ys' cwi, y cari, y bycha na!"

There was real passion in his voice, considering that all he was doing was trying to get out of doing reading. He didn't like anything so sedentary at the best of times, and when it was in English, a language that he spoke rather better than he read... well, it was hardly his idea of fun.

"What's so odd about seeing people like that, anyway?" he asked, backtracking in his mind. "They fit in with the scenery, that's all. Like... like trees, or sheep, or houses. It's the way things are. And you have to know what animals look like, 'cause there's lots and they all stand the same, but you don't have to know what a person's face - a human person's face, I mean - looks like, 'cause everyone holds themselves different and talks different and walks different. Like, Rhys stands like this..." Very quickly, he scribbled a figure on the corner of his paper, small and thin with thrown-back shoulders and a lifted chin. "... and Gwilym stands like this..." Another quick sketch, next to the first, this one taller and broader, slightly hunched and with a curve to the back.

Dai sat back in his chair, tilting it back onto two legs, and pointed to the sheep he had drawn. "You couldn't tell Ceridwen out from a flock at a few hundred yards, really. She's got a bit of a limp, but that's all. But you can tell Rhys from Gwilym at the opposite end of the field, 'cause they stand different. If you can tell people apart anyway, why bother looking at faces? Faces are just there to hold your mouth and eyes on. They all look the same to me. Like... I suppose like sheep all look the same to you."[/size]