Chapter 5

I showed up at Mrs. James' house on the tenth all charged up and ready to slap some paint onto some canvas. I'd studied the book of portraits she'd loaned me and I felt like I was ready for any questions she might have. She had a lot.

We spent most of afternoon in her kitchen sipping herbal tea and critiquing each portrait to within an inch of its life. Some of them were so realistic that they might have been mistaken for photographs from a distance. But she was sure right about one thing; a lot of the technically great paintings left you kind of cold as far as artistic appeal was concerned. I decided that Van Gogh's self-portrait was one of my favorites, even though it was crude, rough and looked like it might have been done by a rank amateur. It's so compelling that you can almost smell his body odor. I don't know if he was a smelly guy but the portrait looks like he didn't take very good care of himself.

Halfway through our session, the doorbell rang.

"Ah," Mrs. James said as she stood and headed for the front door, "that'll be our model. She said she wanted to drop by and talk to us about it."

I had no idea who or what to expect as a model for my very first serious oil portrait but curiosity was killing me as I sipped my tea and waited for them to come through to the kitchen. It was Andrea, about the last person in the world I'd have expected. I must have lit up like a candle when she stepped through the entry.

"Hey! You're the one I'm going to be painting?"

"She's the one we'll both be painting," Mrs. James corrected. "We're going to be working side by side, Terry."

"All right! I can hardly wait to get started."

She poured Andrea some tea (with milk and sugar, I couldn't help but notice) and we got settled around the table. I was curious about Andrea being the model for my first oil portrait but obviously she and Mrs. James had come to some kind of arrangement. I wouldn't have asked but they explained it to me anyway.

It seems she had talked with Mrs. James way back in October about something her father wanted. Her mom had left them when Andrea was ten and her dad had been raising her as a single parent ever since. He absolutely doted on her and when she told him she would be taking some art lessons from the one and only Coretta James, he got all excited and asked if there was any chance she could get a portrait of herself done. Andrea thought that would be asking a lot and would probably be way too expensive but she told him she'd ask. Very much to her surprise, Mrs. James thought it was a great idea because she'd already made plans for me to start doing oil portraits that winter. Andrea could pose for both of us and her dad could choose which painting he liked the most. It wouldn't cost him a penny.

In reality, it was inconceivable that he'd pick my painting over an original Coretta James so I certainly didn't have any sense of competing. I'd have been perfectly content to just stand behind my teacher and watch her do her thing.

Mrs. James wanted to work with natural light and since Andrea and I were both in school, we'd be painting on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Andrea absolutely didn't want to wear anything formal like a gown so between the three of us, we decided she should pose in a skirt and V-neck sweater with a little gold heart on a fine gold chain around her neck; not too dressy but still nice.

We went out to the studio and prepared the backdrop for the portrait by moving a folding room divider behind the dais and draping it with pale lavender satin. Mrs. James asked me to bring the old wingback chair from her living room and set a small, round table next to it. Andrea would be sitting forward on the front of the chair with her legs crossed at the ankles and her right arm resting on the table with her hand draped over the edge. When we were satisfied with the pose, Mrs. James took several digital photos from different angles so we'd always be able to closely reposition Andrea with every session.

I could hardly wait for Saturday afternoon to get started. Andrea showed up wearing jeans, boots and a heavy sweatshirt and changed into a pleated knee-length skirt with a matching sweater. I thought she looked beautiful with her auburn hair done up in a French roll. She practically glowed.

Mrs. James, however, wasn't satisfied with what she saw. "Andrea, it doesn't make any difference today because we'll just be sketching in the general picture but when you come tomorrow, I don't want to see any makeup on your face, OK? You don't need it. In fact, it detracts from your natural beauty and that's what we want to capture, isn't it?"

Andrea seemed a little bothered by that but she agreed. We got her positioned on the chair looking between the two easels at a picture on the far wall. She wouldn't be looking directly at either artist. That's how Mrs. James described it and I got kind of a thrill being referred to officially as an artist.