Chapter 20: Prepping the Canvas

It turned out that even naked, Eva wasn’t the star of the show. I was thankful though that she got naked before Mary took her sweater off. It was one of those oversized baggy things that was sort of a dress, hanging down below her butt. Like the two times I saw her in class, she was wearing tights or yoga pants under it. That’s what I thought she wore under it. When the sweater came off, we all stopped to stare. Eva’s nudity was all but forgotten.

“God! You’re beautiful!” Kelly exclaimed.

Mary blushed and her hands started to shake. She wasn’t just wearing tights, but a full bodystocking. It hugged every curve and indentation, every peak and valley of her body.

“You wear those bodystockings all the time, don’t you,” I said. She nodded.

“I’ll wear slacks or skirts over them in the winter, and I have some heavier weight ones if it gets really cold,” she said as she picked up a pencil and pad. Once she put the pad in front of her and rested the pencil on it, her hands stopped shaking. “Polartec and Patagonia make great winter wear. Sometimes I wear yoga pants and leotards but I like the one-piece outfits. It’s like ... um ... I like the feel...”

“It’s like being hugged over all your body,” I offered. The smile she flashed at me as she nodded was brilliant. I tore my eyes away from the incredibly beautiful girl and focused on the almost as beautiful Eva. Eva had been demure as she stripped, keeping her tits and pussy covered with her hands. But when Mary pulled off her sweater, Eva lost track of where her hands were and just stood there fully exposed. I took her hand and led her to the stool where I’d draped a towel. “What I’ve got in mind first is having you partially on and partially off the canvas,” I said, drawing her attention to me. I scooted the easel with a two-foot canvas up behind her and started directing her into different positions. I’d move the canvas around and try her in different positions until either Kelly or Mary would say, “There! Hold it.” Then I’d step back and just look at the composition, trying to see it in my mind’s eye while Kelly snapped photos and Mary drew. Then we’d start again.

“I could do this if it was water paint,” Eva said when I had her in a position where she was pretty much hugging the canvas in quarter profile with her cheek against the canvas and looking over her shoulder. “I don’t think I could stand to have acrylic in my hair and on my face. I’ll wear the acrylic on the rest of my body for a week, but not on my face.”

“These that you’ve posed so far would do for tests,” Mary said. “But eventually you are going to have to do a canvas big enough to get her whole body on. Any of those poses would have looked great as a full canvas.”

“That’s the problem with doing life-size art,” I agreed. “There’s also the problem of being able to take breaks and get back into the same position. It’s even more critical than in a normal studio pose. The outline is painted right onto the canvas. You can’t fudge it. Thank you, Eva. I think we have enough for tonight. It’s been a long day and I have to work again tomorrow.”

My heaviest class schedule was on Tuesday. I had back-to-back lectures on 2D Concepts and Foundations of Contemporary Art. Then I had to dash across campus while I ate lunch to get to my Literature and the Arts class before rushing back across campus to Blankety’s Drawing class. That didn’t even end my day on Tuesday as I had a five o’clock colloquium in the gallery.

Literature and the Arts was interesting. After a ten-minute class last Wednesday, Professor Merck gave us the rest of the week off with our first discussion scheduled for this Tuesday. I was irritated that I had to take this class. I just wasn’t into art history and looking at the developments of literature in ancient Egypt was something I thought of as completely irrelevant.

“This is a general studies class, so some of you are here from different disciplines. Art, writing, history, and drug abuse,” our stoner prof said. I swear his eyes were so glassy I could see the universe reflected in them. “Usually, a class like this would have a term paper or a test at the end of each segment. I hate reading term papers and grading tests. But I like art and literature. What I’d like at the end of each of our units is an incorporation of the developments during the period we discuss into a creative work of your choosing. If you are a painter, paint incorporating your understanding of the period. If you are a writer, give me a short story, poem, essay, whatever. If you are a historian or political science major, I want to hear about how the subject affects the contemporary application of your area of interest. If you are just a stoner thinking this will be an easy class to get out of the way first semester, I’ll expect to sit over a bowl with you while you discuss the philosophical implications of Akhenaten dancing on the head of a pin.”

We all laughed at his joke, but it looked like a couple in the class might take him seriously. Well, anyway, maybe the class wouldn’t be so bad after all. I’d have six drawing or painting projects incorporating ancient Egypt, Homer’s Troy, Euripides’ Athens, Virgil’s Rome, Dante’s Florence, and some printer dude named Manutius in Venice. Merck wasn’t putting any restrictions on the project other than how well we incorporated what we learned into it. I might do more art in his class than any of my others.

Mary kind of smirked at me when I rushed into drawing class. She seemed calm today and she was wearing a shorter sweater than what I’d seen her in before. I reflexively looked down, but the tights she wore weren’t the completely revealing kind she had on Saturday that showed absolutely every curve and indent. She had some kind of short skirt combined with shorts that came down a few inches below her butt. I didn’t have time to say anything because at exactly three o’clock—about thirty seconds after I sat down—Blankety started lecturing about paper texture. We were expected to have half a dozen different grades of paper in our bags. The materials list for this class had cost a bundle.

The subject for the day was a bowl of fruit and we were to select a match of three different substrates and media to draw it. After he’d lectured for half an hour, he cut us loose to draw without a timer. It was still disconcerting to have him wandering around behind us commenting on the grade school quality of our drawings. “Is that an apple or a beach ball?” he asked as he passed behind me. Rhetorical question. He never expected any of us to answer him. I glanced over at him as he approached Mary.

“Work two-handed,” he said. He picked up her artgum eraser and placed it in her left hand as she held the pencil in her right. “You should erase as much as you draw.” I thought that was mildly insulting, but Mary nodded her head and started working on her drawing with both hands moving. I wouldn’t copy her instructions in class right when she got them, but I was definitely going to try this. For Mary, she had to focus on what both hands were doing at the same time. Neither one was free to shake.

We closed our sketchbooks at exactly five o’clock when Blankety walked out the door. I had five minutes to get to the gallery, but it was only on the other side of the building. Mary fell into step beside me.

“Colloquium?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s a different look for you today. It’s nice.” She blushed and turned to look at me.

“Um ... certain bodystockings I have to wear something over.”

“Not that I have an opinion on that, but why?”

“Most bodystockings are crotchless.” We walked into the gallery and joined thirty-some other students as some artist I’d never heard of was introduced to give a story of his artwork. It was mostly just about how great he considered himself.

Or maybe I was just too preoccupied with thoughts of Mary’s crotchless bodystocking.

We’d set up a system with each of the six of us responsible for dinner one night. Obviously, Tuesday was not my night. I got Mondays because I had no classes and was off work at the grocery store at two. I was down to three eight-hour days a week and it kind of wrecked my weekends. Monday dinner was the end of my ‘work-week’ and Tuesday morning started my ‘school-week’. This past week, I’d switched off with Kelly for Saturday. We reserved Ariel for Friday nights because we were almost always all home for dinner and her Asian cooking was the most time-sensitive.

Tuesday night, I got home to find Jas finishing cleanup in the kitchen. I went to her and cuddled up behind her as she bent over the sink. She wiggled her butt into my stiffening cock and I cupped her breasts as I nibbled her neck. God, I loved Jasmine!

“There’s a bowl of Sarah Lynn’s jambalaya in the fridge for you,” she said as she rubbed her head back against my shoulder. “It heats up quickly and is just as good warmed over as fresh.” I kissed her again and she turned in my arms. “Unless you’d rather eat at the Y,” she murmured.

“Maybe I could dine there for dessert if I fully brush my teeth after dinner,” I said.