Chapter One Continued (post three)

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Chapter One, section three.

“Concept work,” Ms. D announced, “will be graded out of ten. Two marks for each drawing. Leave your sketch books on my desk with the pages flagged with sticky notes and I’ll have them returned to you by the end of the class. You can start working on your final drafts.”

Gaze switched from the teacher to friends with a single glance and chatter broke out amongst the group of seventeen year-olds.

Beth passed me Post-Its. “You should put a sticky note on that drawing with the dress, Nika, I’m sure it would count.”

“Ok,” I said, but hesitated before placing the pink sticky note on the page. I stuck it down quickly, and then closed the book. ‘It’s done,’ I told myself in my head. ‘Your teacher won’t care. No one else will see.’

Beth took my sketch book and handed it in with hers before I could change my mind.

I began my rough sketch for my final figure drawing. I’d chosen to turn a sketch of my little sister into my final drawing, but, as my hands moved across the paper, I kept thinking of the ball gown. It had only been a rough sketch, a concept drawing. I’d done it in that sketch book because it happened to be in my bag when I was at Chapters and saw the image I wanted to recreate. I’d modified it slightly in my drawing; her face was turned a little more to the right, her hand tucked into a fold and her hair a little longer. When I’d drawn it, I hadn’t thought much if it, it was like the other drawings I had at home.

If you had flipped through my sketch books at home, you would have found ball gowns. They were an array of colours, from the deepest green in acrylic paint to the lightest blue in watercolour. Bows flowed down the backs of young girls, caught in twirls as they turned. Moonlight shimmered on updos that sat on faceless heads, arms entangled in a gown too elegant for anything I’d been to. Each page depicted a longer trail, thicker dress, more elaborate colour of fabric. Each person was frozen in time, caught in that moment of perfection, when her face was turned just so and her hair caught the light just right.

My hand loved these girls in dresses. The longer the trail, the longer my hand got to draw that pencil line down the page, creating flowing fabrics. Line by line each dress was created, making a pleat here and a tuck there, flowing on and on, as though there was no end to the gown. Instead, it merged with paper, ground.

These were dresses worn by perfect young women who were never accompanied. Outlines of figures depicted what could be a ballroom or a dinner party, but always in the distance, where they were only whispers. Each woman had a story of beauty, passion, loneliness that only my hand knew, and so it drew, creating these imaginary women with imaginary lives.

My hands were no longer my own when I finished a piece. They were a mess of colours; smelling strange and foreign. They knew the story of another one of my creations.