Chapter 38: New Models

I convinced Merck to let me present my project on the Monday after Valentine’s instead of on Valentine’s Day when they were due. I explained that my model had difficulty making time to be painted until the weekend and that we needed to film at a controlled time and location. He was hesitant. I played my trump.

“Um ... I’m preparing a Baroque rendition of the Bacchanalia next. It’s pretty complex because there are six models involved. It would be really handy to have a second pair of hands on the video camera. Would you be interested?”

“Oh. Sure, I’d love to help out. Women?” I nodded. “That would be ... What’s the date you plan to do that one?”

“I think we’ll do it the weekend of the twenty-third. None of these models will come into class. The whole production will be on video. In fact, I plan to project an image of Poussin’s Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan at the beginning, then fade into my own rendition. From there, we’ll have the figures come to life.”

“That sounds incredibly ambitious.”

“Uh ... How do you feel about porn?”

“I’m not sure what the point of your question is. I’ve nothing personally against it, but I don’t think the administration would be pleased if we showed any in class.”

“Well, these painting sessions sometimes get a little rowdy. And the models are all ... um ... intimate with each other already. I can’t swear that they won’t get a little carried away in the excitement. We plan to just keep filming and use what we can.” Little lie? Not really. We just intended to use it all.

“Are you... ?”

“No, not me, nor any of our crew. Only the models. Hope you’re good with that.”

“I think I can work with it.” He might have been breathing a little heavily.

“Okay. See you Monday.”

“Oh, yes. It will be fine to put off your Garden of Earthly Delights presentation until Monday the eighteenth.”

Whew!

I’m a glutton for punishment. That’s the way Granddad described my relationship with seven women. It’s what I thought of myself when I stood outside the classroom where Blankety was concluding his Drawing I class Thursday afternoon. I wondered how many people he’d lost from the class after six sessions so far this semester. I was actually going to ask him for a critique. Fuck!

At exactly five o’clock he walked out the door of the classroom and I fell in step with him as he swept out of the room and down the hall. I felt like Harry Potter trying to get a word with Snape. Why am I doing this?

“Professor? I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on a project I’m doing for a different class.” He turned and scowled at me.

“You know my opinion. Sophomoric. Big dreams for a small talent. Too much focus on the reflection and not enough on the subject. Probably the wrong pencil and paper. Barely in a class that would be considered art.”

“If you would look at it, sir, I’d appreciate it. I’m trying to improve.” God! What an obsequious idiot I am!

“The indignities that I have to put up with at this so-called school,” he muttered. “Sit down and give me your scribbles,” he said as we entered his office. I handed him my sketch for The Garden of Earthly Delights. “Pervert!” he snarled when he looked at the sketch. “I knew that the minute you grabbed the hand of that disabled girl who sits next to you and worships you. She’s the only one in the class who has a real talent.” I was seething but I vowed to learn something from his irrational rantings about my shortcomings. “Is this what you really want? To dress up a woman as if she is simply a cunt waiting to be plundered? Ninety-five percent of the people on this campus would try to hang you. Four-and-a-half percent wouldn’t get it and the remaining half-percent would shake their heads and say, ‘too bad about what happened to Jett.’ The composition is flat. If you are going to mimic great art, you need to find the depth. Making flowers out of genitalia is fine but what kind of flowers?”

He turned to his whiteboard and grabbed a marker. While looking at my sketch, he quickly outlined it on the board. In thirty seconds, I could see Ariel take shape and, in a minute, flowers bloomed from her in the shape of the cunt garden. The only real difference was that he gave her bigger boobs. He tossed the sketch back on his desk and started highlighting things with a red marker. I’d been in his classes since September and this was the first time I’d seen him draw. It was amazing.

“First, composition. Making the flowers into a flowering vagina is okay as far as it goes, but where are the thorns? Where is the Venus Flytrap? Where are the bees pollinating the garden and threatening to sting? You can’t have the earthly delight without the earthly peril. Second, the depth. The closer the viewer gets to the work, the less he should see the obvious and the more he should see the shapes it comprises. Each flower should be a compilation of smaller units. And don’t limit yourself to genitalia. Free it up. Symbols of fertility. Third, focus. If you maintain the style through the entire composition, it will all blur together. Something needs to stand out. Perhaps the eyes. Render them as photographically as your little skill will let you. Let them peer out from the overwhelming backdrop of the garden.”

He turned and glared at me, shoving my sketchbook across his desk. I couldn’t say anything. He’d torn it apart and put it back together in three seconds. I barely got my cell phone up and snapped a picture of his whiteboard before he started erasing it.

“Redraw it and show me the new rendering in three weeks.”

“I have to paint it for my class next weekend.”

“I don’t care what you paint. I care that you learn to draw. Bring me a rendering that shows you know both the subject and the story. Then draw it again. By the end of the term you might have an acceptable drawing.”

I didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t going to argue or defend anything. I was going to try to learn what he taught. He wanted me to render this again and again. I’d do that. I picked up the sketchbook and walked out. I realized that was one of his moves. When you are finished, just leave.

Bosch’s triptych in the Museo del Prado in Madrid is nearly seven feet tall and thirteen feet wide. It must have taken forever to paint it and that clued me in on the scope of the project I’d proposed at the airport. I needed to get a rendering for that project done and get out there to lay in the base soon. Doing a project that big was going to be a monster task.

Doing my own garden triptych was almost as daunting now that I’d been ripped to shreds by Blankenship. I picked up the materials I’d need after my morning class on Friday and spent most of the day assembling the pieces at Granddad’s. He had a pretty good shop and was always willing to help me if I needed to build canvas frames or some other odd thing. When he realized what I wanted, he even used a router to cut notches for the hinges and then we both sanded the surface I’d paint on. It was three-sixteenths-inch clear birch plywood and I attached a one-by-two frame on the back to stabilize it. If it ever became a major work of mine, I’d eventually have to come up with a scene for the outside, too. The center panel was three feet square with the two side panels half as wide. When fully open, it would be six feet wide and three feet tall.

It barely fit in the Mini.

Before the day was over, I’d put a primer coat on the wood and was back to work on the sketch. If Sarah Lynn hadn’t slammed a book shut in the living room at two a.m., I’d probably have pulled an all-nighter. Some Friday date night!

“Jett, take me to bed,” Sarah Lynn demanded. “You have to be at work in four hours.”

“Fuck! I didn’t even realize what time it is. Thanks. Let’s go, honey.”

We got our teeth brushed and fell into bed next to Jas. My cock twitched when I thought about making love to either one of the girls, but we ended up just cuddled together sound asleep.

At five-thirty, I left the two holding each other and went to work.

I wanted to get right to work on Saturday, but I was so tired after I left the grocery store that I came home and collapsed in bed for a couple of hours. I woke up to Sarah Lynn nibbling her way across my chest.

“We were too tired last night. Are you awake enough to enter my garden of earthly delights?”

“Mmm. Your garden is causing my stalk to sprout,” I laughed. “I love you, Sarah Lynn.”

“I love you, too. Now lie back and let me plant your sprout.” She pushed me down on the bed and straddled my erection, sinking onto it as I held her breasts. She moved with me in a gentle wave motion that brought us slowly up from our sleep state to full sensual awareness.

I was still kind of in awe of Sarah Lynn. She wasn’t the prettiest of my girlfriends, but it’s hard to think a girl who’s riding your cock isn’t pretty. She was as smart as all the rest of us put together. She was about the most daring person I’d ever met. And she was a natural leader. We never made a big deal about our decision-making process in the house, but if there was a disagreement, we automatically turned to her to arbitrate. When we came to an agreement, we looked to her to validate it. I’d begun to see the sense of her studying political science and wondered if the US would be ready for a female president with a husband and six wives when she ran for office.