Carter's wife, Carrie, walked in the studio clipping on an earring. "Time for work," she said. "Your students will be waiting."
Carter continued to stare at the illustration he was working on for a magazine cover of several children playing. "Almost. I can sit here for five more minutes and not be late."
Carrie walked across the room and stood next to him. "At the beginning of the semester you couldn't wait to get to Illustrative Drawing. You couldn't stop talking about all the projects you wanted your students to do a month before class even started. Remember the first day? You jumped out of bed an hour early. And when you took Debby to pose for your class because you wanted them to draw little children, she said you were bouncing around the room."
Carter stared at the ceiling. "Yes, the good old days."
"That was a month ago."
Carter looked back at his illustration. "Do you think the sky is too blue?"
Carrie sat down on a chair beside him. "What happened to the guy who couldn't wait to share everything he learned at ArtCenter with his students?"
"Oh, he's still here. I think." He looked at a rock in his picture. "I'm just thinking of all the work I have to do. I have 120 hours of jobs sitting here in my studio and only a few months to do them. I've never had so much work, and I've never been so close to earning so much money, but I have to spend the entire day teaching, not working."
"Look at it this way: it's only one day a week, you enjoy it, and it's a good diversion. You can't spend all your time in this studio or you'll go nuts."
Carter leaned back on his chair and smiled. "That's why I have you and the kids."
She smiled back and ran her fingers through his thick, brown hair. "I doubt that pile of work is all that's bothering you."
Carter turned away from his wife and looked at a painting of an old man sleeping he had done at ArtCenter. "Carrie," he said, "I've been out of school and working professionally for almost five years, and I still don't know what I want to do."
Carrie leaned back. "You don't want to be a freelance illustrator anymore? That's been your dream since college. That's all you could talk about the four years at ArtCenter."
"Oh, it still is, but . . . "
"But what?"
"Well," he looked down at his wife's hands on her lap, "a lot of the students at ArtCenter went there knowing exactly what they wanted to do, and they focused on that. I didn't. I still don't. I keep looking back at all the time I've wasted."
"Honey, it wasn't wasted. You've done a lot of beautiful work in a lot of different styles," his wife said.
"Yes, a lot of different styles. Look at my paintings." He pointed around the room. "I don't have a style yet. My art's not going in any direction; I just do whatever project comes my way, like this magazine illustration of kids. It's a good painting, but it isn't anything special."
"You'll find your style, Carter. You're still young; be patient." Carrie put her hand on Carter's shoulder. "What are your students doing today?"
"They have a drapery assignment due, then we have a couple of models dressed as members of an orchestra coming in after lunch."
"Those should be great drawings."
Carter stared across the room at an old drawing of model dressed an English Queen. "Sometimes they create great drawings, but usually they don't. They just seem to know how to begin or end; they draw without thinking what the finished drawing should look like." Carter turned around. "And their styles are so different. I'm not sure how to grade them. That's another thing bothering me. What's the difference between a mistake and valid expression? How do I tell something radically different that's good from something radically different that's bad? It would be a lot simpler if they would just draw in the ArtCenter style. I know how to grade that."
"They're artists, Carter. They each have their own way of doing things, and you have to let them." Carrie folded her arms. "I seem to remember a young art student at ArtCenter that would come home to his beautiful, sweet, understanding wife upset about being told how to make a line," she said. "Besides, weren't you just moping about not having a style of your own?"
"But ArtCenter is one of the best schools in the world. Why wouldn't my students want to draw like the best?"
"You draw like that and you aren't happy. Besides, the best artists in the world don't teach; they're too busy producing art."
"Gee, thanks, honey."
"Except for you of course, dear," she said. "You're busy with a million projects, too, but you still find time to teach. The lesser great artists just produce great art. What do you want for breakfast?"
Carter looked at her. She smiled at him. "I don't know," he said. She fixed him ham and eggs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Half an hour later Carter walked through the doors of the Hamilton building. During the drive to work he thought about what his wife had said. His students did have their own styles. Maybe he should try to work with them to develop those styles instead of imposing his own. His own style. He wished he had one to impose. No, it was better to teach the students the ArtCenter way to draw, then let them develop a style on their own. He looked around. What an old building. He thought it sad they were going to tear it down next year-being the oldest building on campus and all-but it was falling apart. The college really did need a new art building. He walked down the ramp into the foyer. The art show had been changed. Several prints of modern art were hanging on the walls where the African masks had been the week before. Carter stopped to look at them. The paint splashed canvas was a Jackson Pollock; he had never liked Pollock. Next to it was Picasso's Three Musicians; Picasso was a genius at design, but Carter didn't like how he drew. The next painting made Carter smile. Leindecker was one of Carter's favorites. He had a collection of old Saturday Evening Post with Leindecker drawings on the front page. He stood and admired it for a couple of minutes then moved on to another print. Each was very different stylistically, yet each was well thought out and well designed. He wouldn't have put some of them under the title Great Works of Modern Art, but he could see the merit of each one-except the Pollock.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carter walked into the figure drawing room and shivered. "I think someone forgot to turn the heat on this morning, Kirk."
"I think it's to keep us awake." Kirk and a half dozen other students were sitting around talking.
Carter looked around. "Where is everyone?"
"A bunch of colleges came today to try and sell their schools to us," Kirk said.
"Oh, that's right," Carter said. "Are they going to be here all day?"
"Nope, just the morning," Laura said.
Carter raised his voice. "If any of you need to leave to talk to any of the representatives, feel free to just walk out. I'll be critiquing the drapery assignments for an hour or two, but we won't draw until after lunch, so you won't miss much." The students nodded.
"A few people put up their assignments before they left," Dave said.
"Oh, good, I want to see what everyone's done." Carter walked around the room to avoid the drawing horses scattered in the center. One of the windows was open. "That's part of the reason for the refrigeration I think." He shut it. Several papers flew off the sill. He bent down to pick them up. Other papers were scattered along the floor with several piles forming in the corners. Carter could see several short, discarded pencils lying at the base of a nearly full trash can. The drawing horses-long white wooden benches with a padded seat and a stand for a board like an easel-were arranged in ragged circles in the center and at the end of the room. Floorboards squeaked from students walking around the room working on different projects.
His students walked over to the crit. board and made a half circle around it with drawing horses. Carter noticed that only five people had put up drawings. "Where are everybody else's?" he asked.
Kirk said, "Well, I had this paper to write in English."
"I was studying for this test in Anatomy," said, "and, well, just didn't get it done."
"I was out really late last night, didn't get home until three," Laura said.
Carter looked at the seven. "Clients aren't going to care about a paper in English, a test in Anatomy, or how long you stayed up; they will expect you to have the job done. Did everybody else go to the college representatives' meetings?"
Kirk and Dave, the only two who were listening, looked at each other.
"Don't know."
"Probably."
Carter turned back to the crit. board. "I'm disappointed. This assignment is a really valuable study of how to make charcoal on paper look like cloth draped over an object. You need to be able to render cloth. Let's look at what drawings are up and discuss what's working and what's not." He looked at the first one. "Whose is this?" He looked for a signature. "Oh, James. I need to talk to him about this."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
After two and a half hours, the morning session was over. Carter sent his students to lunch. He yanked the edge of his mustache as they left. Leon, the department head, walked into the room. "Small class you've got today. You must be as brutal as I am if you can scare away most of your students after only a month. And you only teach Fridays. I have to see students twice a week to cut my class in half."
"Some of them are at the college meetings, though I doubt that's where all the missing students are."
"So, how is the class going?" Leon asked.
Carter looked at him, then out the window. "It was a long morning, and it's going to be a long afternoon."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A hot blast of air hit Carter when he stepped into the figure drawing room after lunch. "It's always too hot or too cold in this room. But it wouldn't be the Hamilton if the temperature were ever just right," he said with a smile. Carter walked to the other side of the room to slide the old windows up. A small stream of wind blew a few handouts off the windowsill. "We really need to clean this room sometime."
He looked at the crit. board. The drawings were left up from the critique earlier that morning. A couple sagged from a single tack in the corner.
James, who had been gone that morning, walked up to him. "Could you make a few comments on my drawing?"
"Yes, James. In fact, I wanted to talk to you about it. Let's bring it over here." He took the drawing off the crit. board and brought it over to the middle of the room. He set it on one of the horses, stood back, and looked at it. His finger lightly tapped his mouth as he studied the drawing of a cloth draped over a chair next to a couch. He frowned.
"First of all, James," he pointed to the drawing, "you did it on the wrong paper. I wanted it done on Canson or some other toned paper. With the white paper you have to add the middle tones. I wanted you to add the really light lights and the darks, not the middle tones. Let the paper do that for you."
James nodded. "I meant to do it on the Strathmore velvet grey paper. I thought I had a few sheets, but, when I went to do this drawing, I was out."
"You should have run to the bookstore and gotten more. Second, you aren't taking advantage of edge quality. All of your edges are the same. You need to have both hard and soft edges. You used only value contrast to define the forms."
"Is that bad? Isn't it clear where the folds in the cloth are? I think I've defined them pretty well."
Carter's mouth moved from one side of his face to the other. He bounced his head from side to side. He heard a couple of students behind him sharpening their pencils. He turned around to see Kirk looked at them.
"It's not . . . bad," Carter turned back to James, "it's just not what the assignment called for. Use the line quality to suggest what type of material the cloth is and what kind of chair is underneath. It looks like some sort of recliner."
"It is," James said with a slight scowl. "I think it reads recliner pretty clearly."
"Use hard and soft edges to say that, not just value. It will also tighten up the drawing. Right now it's too pencil stroky-if that's a word."
"You don't think it adds a spontaneous, carefree feel to the drawing?" His smile straightened out.
"It sort of does, but that isn't what the assignment called for. Let's look at some of the other students' drawings, and I'll show you what I mean."
They walked over to remaining drawings. A couple were flapping in the breeze. "Let's tack these better so we can see them." He moved a couple of the drooping ones to the middle of the board. "Let's see. Hmm. None of them are really good, but this one is almost using line quality correctly. He really needs to darken that line though. And this one really doesn't use edge quality to say the table underneath is hard."
"But you could tell it was hard. Isn't that good enough?"
Carter scowled and moved on to another drawing. "This one is starting to use different edges but there is too much contrast between whites and dark. He needs a more gradual change. And his technique is too rough. The pencil lines should not look like pencil lines."
Carter turned and looked at James. "Do you remember the beginning of the semester when I showed the class a bunch of my old drawings and talked about some of the assignments that I wanted the class to do?"
"Yeah."
"Do you remember the drapery assignment?"
"Yeah. You showed us a drawing of a cloth thrown over something in a chair. You asked if we could tell what was underneath the sheet, but no one could."
"It was a banjo."
"I remember you telling us that. Then we all nodded our heads and said, 'oh.'"
Carter looked away. "I wanted these drawings to be done like that one. I should have done a demo for the class. I kept saying I would, then I didn't. Then you all would have seen how it should have been done. Next time I will be sure to do that."
Carter made several more comments about James' drawing and noticed James' eyebrows arched up ever so slightly downward towards his nose. The heater pumped more warm air in. James' smile continued to level off, then droop. Students came in and out of the figure drawing room. The wind continued to blow papers around the room. James' eyes drifted from his drawing to the other students' drawings, to the other students in the room, then back. Still he nodded and said ok at the proper times.
"You have two months to redo this drawing before the final portfolio is due, James. Pay attention to everything I've pointed out." Carter asked, "Do you have any questions? Can you see all of your problems?"
James sat and looked at his drawing. His face was expressionless. He picked up his drawing, walked across the room past Kirk and Dave, who had both heard the critique, and placed the drawing in his portfolio. Their eyes had followed James across the room. Carter stood at the other end of the room looking down at the ground. Kirk whispered, "He didn't say one good thing about that drawing."
"I know." Dave said. "I thought it was one of the better ones. So what if it wasn't exactly how the teacher had pictured it; it's still a good piece of art."
Carter frowned, and two models walked into the room, one holding a flute and the other a violin case.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For the rest of the afternoon the class drew cellists, violinists, a flautist, and a tuba player. Carter walked around the room making comments. When he stopped to comment on James' drawing, James would just stare at his drawing and say ok. As Carter passed Laura, he noticed how different her style was from Dave's but liked them both. He thought about the prints in the gallery and what his wife had said that morning. Should he force his style so much?
At the end of class everyone handed their drawings in. James picked up his portfolio in one hand and his pencil case in the other. He started to walk out.
"James, wait," Carter called after him.
James walked out to the top of the stairs, never looking back.
"James, wait," Carter said.
James stopped.
"James, let's look at your drapery assignment again."
"Why, was there something you missed in the critique? Did I use the wrong pencil? Was my signature in the wrong place?"
Carter frowned at him. "Don't get mad at me. I've just been thinking."
James still didn't turn.
"I've been thinking about this for a while. I want to go over your assignment again. I was mainly focusing on doing it in a certain style, but I should have tried to make it work without changing the style." James turned and followed Carter back in.
They walked to the crit board. Kirk and Dave were finishing up a couple of drawings in front of it. "Would you two mind moving to the center of the room. I need the crit board."
"Sure, no problem," Kirk said.
Carter hung James' drawing back on the crit board. "James, do you remember the beginning of the semester when I talked to each student individually, looked at their work, then talked to them about a direction to go in this class."
"Yes. You only spent about three minutes with me and ten with the others."
"Well, ten minutes a student was taking too long. I'm sorry about that, but do you remember what we talked about during those three minutes."
"Yeah, I was concerned about being able to make enough money as an artist, and you told me about all of the work you'd just gotten for the next six months and how you were earning more money than you ever had before."
"Yes, and I've really gotten bogged down the last couple of months. To get everything done I've basically been creating art like I did in ArtCenter where I had to have a good project done every day. I guess I've been in that mode critiquing everybody's art. Instead of trying to figure out what your art is trying to be, I've been trying to make your art fit my mold."
"Professor Carter, not to be rude, but what is your mold? None of the work you've shown us has a consistent look; I haven't been able to figure out what your style is beyond a few tricks and techniques that you seem to use a lot."
Carter sat up straight, taking a deep breath, and chuckled. "It's funny you mention that. I was just talking to my wife about that this morning."
"Professor Carter, at the beginning of the semester, you said you wanted this to be our class. You said that you wanted us to create the works that we want in our portfolios, yet . . . "
"Yet I tell you how to do them. Let's look at your drawing. The style aside, it is too loose; you really need to clean up your lines and strokes. They look uncontrolled and chaotic. Before you put down a line, think about how it should look and how you're going to make it. It's good to visualize the finished drawing before making your first mark."
After ten minutes the critique was over, James thanked Carter for the comments, sounding like he meant it this time, and walked away with a smile.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Class had been over for nearly an hour. Only Kirk and Dave were still around, talking about a new movie opening that night. Carter hung the day's drawings on the wall in the hall. As he pinned each one up, he looked at it and smiled when he recognized the artist from the style alone, then looked at the signature to check himself. Some of the drawings were actually very good.
Kirk and Dave walked past him to the stairs. "See you next Friday, Professor Carter."
"See you, Kirk. Make sure to have your assignment next time, Dave."
"I'll try, but things just come up." He said turning around, then continued down the stairs.
Carter hung up another picture. He stepped back and looked at it carefully. It had a really nice curve from that elbow, down the arm, and along the side of that cello. Great flow. He could almost hear the cello playing. A title for this drawing came to his mind. Then he saw another image in his head and another title. "Oooo. I've got to write this down." He spun around, ran down the hall to the figure drawing room, nearly hit the door frame, then stopped. He looked around for something to write on, anything, saw a discarded drawing on the floor with a half-used pencil on top of it. He dove to grab the paper and pencil before the images were gone. For the next half hour he sat there on the floor writing down painting titles as they came to him. Leon walked in. "What are you doing on the floor? It's filthy. There are chairs."
Carter looked up at him. "I know what I want to do now!" He started to write again. "I know what I want to do!"
©2000 Jeff Thomason