A Fig Leaf

In college I didn't study art; I earned a Criminal Justice degree and took only one art class; Drawing 101.  I’d been doing pretty well and was pleased with my progress on still life and landscapes.  About the fourth week into class the professor told us we’d have a live model the next day and would begin drawing the human figure.  

Now, I'd done figure drawing and portraits in high school art classes and assumed it would be about the same thing.  A person would come in and pose while we stood around in a circle behind our easels and sketched.  

As I happily set up my easel and papers, the male model walked into the room in a bathrobe.  Pencil poised, I expectantly looked on.   He stopped and dropped his robe to the floor. And stood there, completely naked, facing me. 

 I couldn’t have been more surprised if he turned into a mouse and ran away.  In fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.  I ducked behind my easel, shocked and embarrassed, my face getting hot.

I cast my eyes wildly about the room at the other students wanting to shout “He’s naked!” But everyone was calmly sketching away. Of course.

It suddenly dawned on me that in a college art class we would work on the whole human figure. And of course the model would be naked.  I mean nude. I realized I was being immature and that I had to pull myself together and act as if I were a cultured and worldly student, accustomed to drawing naked guys all the time. I mean nudes, not naked guys.

See?  Still immature.

I peered over my easel with what I imagined at the time was a casual, observant gaze.  I’m certain now my eyes were like pie plates. The model reclined in front of me, looking bored.  I took a deep breath and began to draw, gradually calming down a bit. I kept telling myself everyone else is drawing this naked guy ---I mean nude figure---Why couldn’t I?

I drew the entire model, head to toe, every finger and facial feature.  But I could not draw his penis.  I couldn’t even look at it!  

What if I drew it too big?  

Or too small? 

Or what if it looked weird?

What if it moved? 

I knew I was being ridiculous and but I couldn’t help it. 

I noticed the model took a break now and then and walked around the room peering over students' shoulders at their drawings.  I didn't want him looking at mine. So I packed up my stuff and ran out of the class early. I got home and told my roommate, an art major, my harrowing story.  

“Let’s see it” she said matter-of- factly.  I unrolled the drawing and there in all his detailed glory was this poor male model lacking his manhood. There was a a big blank spot where his penis should have been. 

Without a word she calmly picked up a pencil and drew in a fig leaf. 

It was complete.

I got a C in Drawing 101.

Art School

I sometimes say that I attended Art School. When I was about 8, my parents signed my siblings and me up for summer kids’ art classes at a local college. I'm pretty sure that counts, right? 

They were planned and taught by college kids.  It was the 60’s, so most of the stuff we worked on was pretty trippy, hippy-ish and sort of out there:  Batik on paper with melted crayons, tie-dye coffee filters and peace-sign dreamcatchers.  One especially sixties-ish project was a candlestick holder – a wine bottle on which we glued bits of cut-out cardboard, covered tight with aluminum foil and burnished with black ink and paint. 

My clearest memory from those classes, however, is when our student teacher left the classroom for a few moments on some now forgotten errand or emergency. No adult was sent in to relieve him.  It was just the students.   I was accustomed to strict catholic school nuns as teachers.  They would put in you the corner for hours if you misbehaved. Or worse: they carried sticks back then and were not afraid to use them.  

 I was delighted with this new-found freedom.  They didn’t diagnose kids then like they do today, but I would most assuredly have been found attention deficit disordered.  My feckless mind immediately turned to what an unsupervised classroom offered me.  I cast a restless eye around and, finding nothing better to do, climbed up and started dancing on my desk.  I was having great time, gyrating around like a spastic eel.  The other kids laughed, which only encouraged me.  

Then a large, red-faced, angry professor put his head in the door and told me to get the hell down.  Startled and red-faced, I scrambled off the desk and sat in my chair, thinking I’d be in a lot of trouble.  He turned and walked away.  I blinked. Wait. Walked away?  I couldn’t believe it!  I needn’t have worried. There were no sticks, no standing in corners. Relief flooded through me. I remember feeling very fortunate and decided to behave myself.

As soon as he went away, some of the other kids ran to the chalkboard to puff erasers together. As I watched the chalk dust rise around them, my newfound “good girl” attitude quickly evaporated. I joined them and we joyfully clapped erasers inside giant white clouds.  

Our hapless teacher returned a short time later.  He soon had us settled down again, happily cutting up pieces of cardboard and gluing them to wine bottles.  Looking back on it, I think I would have hated having me as a student.

Art School was fun, but the only lesson I learned there was that I couldn’t wait to get to college.