Chapter 3: Drawing Rita

“HERE? NOW?” she asked, startled. I’d just suggested that I sketch her and she looked around to see if I had a pencil and paper at hand. “On a napkin?”

“I’ll do it with words. There are a lot of different media for art.”

“Okay,” she said. “How do you want me to pose?” She giggled a little, thinking she was making a joke.

“First, I’ll just spend some time looking at you. I want to really see you,” I said. “It’s easy to get lost in your eyes, but I want to see all of you, from every angle.” I heard a little catch in her breath at the implication, but she didn’t move. True to what I was saying, I took the opportunity to drink her in. She was a mature woman of twenty-six years but I could still see the innocence and wicked sense of adventure she’d had as a school girl. She and her sister with a bunch of neighbor kids had once set up a water slide in my back yard because mine was the one with a slope to it. I remembered them in their bathing suits, splashing down the sheet of plastic. It wasn’t difficult to think of the difference between the slight bumps that filled out their swimsuits then and the incredible breasts that filled out her blouse now.

I reached out and touched her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, hanging down over one shoulder. When I grazed her cheek, she involuntarily leaned in toward my fingers.

“I want to know the shape of your hairline and the texture of your hair. I look deeply at the softness of your skin and imagine what it would feel like under my fingers’ caress. I look at the shape of your face, the elegance of your neck. I want to know the breadth of your shoulders. I pause for a moment just to watch your breasts rise and fall with your breathing. I guide your face with my fingers so your eyes can look just over my left shoulder and I tilt your head slightly to emphasize your jawline.

“My first sketch is quick and near life-size on a sheet of newsprint, drawn with soft charcoal. I capture the centerline of your face and position of your eyes. I draw in the tip of your nose and the simplest rendition of your lips, letting the charcoal slide to the side to get more fullness in just one line.” Rita’s eyes fluttered as I traced the centerline of her face with my forefinger from the hairline to the tip of her chin. When I traced the shape of her lips with my finger, they trembled and parted slightly.

I continued, tracing the edge contour of her ear and hair and let my finger trail down her right shoulder and upper arm. Then, as if I were drawing on paper, I lightly grazed the depression where her throat met her collarbone and surprised her as I used a finger on each hand to trace from her collarbone, following the line of her blouse to the cleft between her breasts. Her eyes popped open wider, but she didn’t shift her pose.

“With a rough sketch having shown me how you are put together, I switch to a smaller pad and a 4B pencil,” I continued. “I adjust your pose slightly, tilting your head so I see the other ear and you are looking over my right shoulder. I lift your chin slightly and tease a soft smile from your lips.” She nearly sucked my finger into her mouth as I stroked the corner of her mouth to get a little smile from her. I wondered if that was how da Vinci got the Mona Lisa’s smile. She gasped and nearly collapsed when I continued.

“I loosen the top button of your blouse and slide the collar further over your right shoulder, moving the strap with it so it will not be in my composition. I’m ready to look at the play of light and shadows on your skin without lines. This time, I start with the shape of your eyes in the lamplight, smudging the tone to where I want it and deepening your sparkling eyes. I lay my pencil flat on the paper and, after lightly shading the lowlight of your cheek, I use my thumb to spread the graphite up toward the high point of your cheekbone, capturing it without a line between the inset of your eye and your cheek.”

I was thoroughly enjoying the feel of her skin as I softly stroked her face and from the rate of her breathing, it was apparent she was enjoying it, too. She’d been caught in the mesmerizing narration of her body.

“I note how the shadow on your right defines the highlight of your nose and extends into your upper lip, receding in the depths of the corner of your mouth. Your chin doesn’t define the end of your face, but rather the shadow of your neck reveals the shape of your chin. I find where the shadow stretches from your earlobe down beneath your jaw and smooth the tone to give shape to your throat, ending in the depths of the hollow at your collarbone.” Rita was breathing notably faster and more shallowly as my fingers traced each part of her face and worked down her neck as I drew her in my mind. Had she been ticklish, the touch would have been torture, but she was merely sensitive and a deep flush had begun to slip from her face down her throat and over her breasts. I continued by tracing her collarbone out from the neck to the right shoulder where I had pushed her blouse and saw her eyes close as she absorbed my touch.

“Now I am ready to find a pose for my detailed sketch. I loosen the last buttons of your blouse so it falls away from your shoulder and down your arm. I slip your arm out of the sleeve and the strap of your bra so nothing interrupts the smooth flow of the line of your shoulder and arm. The arm is defined on the inside by your breast pressed against it. I turn you so you are nearly facing away from me and ask you to undo your ponytail.” Rita glanced at me to confirm that I actually wanted her to do this herself and when I nodded, she reached up to loosen the knot and let her hair fall free. Before she could lower her arm, I held it gently in the position with her hand in her hair.

“I ask you to loosen your ponytail, not because I can’t do it, but because I want to see the line on the underside of your arm,” I said as I traced the line down along her smoothly shaved underarm and let my fingers part as they traced both the line of her back and her breast at the same time. A tiny mewling sound escaped her lips as my fingers trailed across her right breast. She was so used to my hands on her body now that she didn’t flinch when I found the front clasp of her bra. I flicked it open and it fell to her side.

“The shadows here are tricky,” I continued my narration as my hands gently stroked from her armpit down along the side of her beautifully exposed breast. Her eyes were once again closed, so she could not see how intently I feasted on the sight of her breast and the tiny pink nipple that in spite of its petite size seemed to stretch the skin taut as a drumhead. “I must be careful to capture the light and shadow as the hollow of your underarm stretches to meet the rise of your breast. The black and gray of the graphite seem so inadequate to capture the deep flush in your skin and the subtle darkening of your nearly transparent nipple sitting high on the proud mound of your breast. I need to capture in the shading the firmness and the softness, carefully blending the shadow into the crease beneath your breast so there is no plasticity in the rendering. I take great care to find the right shape and size of your nipple with the graphite clinging to my thumb.”