Stroppy cow to the dogs bollocks

I love going to the different art workshops I attend regularly. I always go with a happy upbeat feeling, one of knowing that I shall be spending the time doing something I really love doing, being with my artist friends, and shall learn something useful along the way too. I arrived at the one at the weekend with that feeling. There weren’t many of us there, only eight, and I knew all of them well from being in the same local art group. The male tutor didn’t know any of us.

So, it was somewhat strange that within ten minutes of me walking through the door that I was spitting mad, in a stroppy mood, and marked down as a trouble maker as far as the tutor was concerned.

It happened innocently, as far as he was concerned, and ominously, as far as I was concerned.

We had all set up our places within the room, and since there were only eight of us there, and not the usual 20 or so, there was loads of place for us to work in and we could all have a double table, rather than one small one, which is sometimes the case, and which I always struggle with, as I like space around me, and enough workspace to work from.

Then, he wanted us to move to the front of the room, to two small semi circles of tables shoved up together, so that it would be easier for him to see what we were doing.  I think it was at that point that I got stroppy, not helped by the fact that two other women there started muttering under their breaths, too. I started to move my desk, then I thought “Sod it!” and moved back again. He didn’t say anything, but I noticed he didn’t make any eye contact with me for the next hour or so, and when I asked a question, he ignored me totally, much to the amusement of myself, and one other woman there who also noticed, who twinkled her eyes at me with a knowing grin. I continued with the session, and then the annoyance was compounded by the fact that he asked us all if we knew how to sharpen a pencil. I think I do, yesssssss. I said out loud at that point to someone else, out of hearing of the tutor “I think I’m in the wrong class”. But I stuck with it, and knew the importance of getting a sharp point on a pencil, because otherwise how can you draw properly with it. But I didn’t need to be shown it, which was the next step he went to as it was passed around the room for us to wonder and wow at. Oh dear, this is going to be hard going…..

I’m not sure at which point things started to change. Maybe it was when he asked the group what mediums we paint in, and I said with complete confidence “Oils, acrylics and watercolours”, maybe it was when I told him about the large and important commission I’m doing of an oil painting, maybe it was the fact he realised I could draw when he saw what I did when he got us doing three ten minute drawings of  each other. He certainly stood behind me as I was drawing, and said “Perfect!” before moving on. Maybe it was when he saw how I could use watercolours too, to fill out one of the drawings into bright colour. Maybe it was when he said to me when he watched me painting “I’ve never met an oil painter who could understand how to paint wet-in-wet in watercolours before!” and I said “”Well you have now”” and one of the other women there said to him about me “Well, she’s clever!!!!”. 

I’d really enjoyed it, particularly when he’d got us doing the three ten-minute poses as three of the group volunteered to sit and pose. Two of them sat in the chair when it was their turn, doing nothing more than a normal pose, but one did a pose with her head in her hands, her face looking down, and I loved it, and really enjoyed the drawing part, almost more than filling it with colour afterwards. I’ve missed it, and missed the way my pencil flew across the paper, making marks, drawing the bare outlines, then filling them out with more and more detail, my eyes following the lines infront of me, and copying them to the paper infront of me. I also liked the fact that with the other artwork he got us doing, after that, it was the expression and body language we were to draw as much as the person depicted. It was all most helpful and interesting to me as an artist and a person who likes people.

……..

And the reason I wouldn’t move? Not just because of the tightness of us all bunched up together, its because I’m too much of an artist to want to leave the light of a large sunlit window overlooking sun filled blossom trees, to move to a place in the room where the light was far dimmer. I’m like a moth, I need to be by the light.