Gesso
Part 4
Note to Readers:
This series concerns the adventures of a friend of ours.
It's been embellished and fictionalized, partly by her as she told it, and partly by me.
I have her permission to repeat it.
You'll Want to Read Parts 1-3 to make any sense of this story.
Another note for anybody with a general tendency to panic:
this story, and Sonia's trip to China, occurs well before any news or fears of Corona virus had become known.
So don't panic!
*****
I have a lot to do. I rarely work on weekends, and certainly haven't this one. That always leaves me with a backup on Monday -- bills, emails, browsing over the sites of other artists I follow, and then getting down to my own ideas. My latest commission is still languishing in my mind. It was delivered to me as a fairly conventional "Little Mermaid" scene, a mermaid with flowing hair, sitting on a rock in a little bay, with gentle waves, gazing towards a setting or rising Sun.
I'm starting to have second thoughts. I look over my preliminary sketches and studies. I have waves, corals, rocks, female shoulders, but I just can't feel that scaly butt and fins. What if I just made her a nude woman instead? It's a little inconsistent, I think, that as much as I love spending my personal time nude, and I'm naked now as I sit at the computer staring at Inkscape, that I rarely feature nudes in my paintings. Most of my figures wear flowing gowns or classical draperies. Maybe it's a lack of confidence, I wonder.
I suddenly realize that I want to do nudes. I want to do lots of nudes, in different positions. I want to do male and female nudes, full frontal, graphically displayed. I want to draw lovingly detailed penises, vaginas, pussies, cocks. I want to paint erotica. Fuck that, I want to do hard-core pornography. I want to detail the faces of women in the throws of orgasm, heads thrown back, mouths open in shrieks of passion. I want to illustrate the fierce triumphant bellow of a man in mid-ejaculation, just before his roar turns to a sigh. How can I differentiate these expressions from those of pain and anguish? Is it all a matter of context, or is there some subtle clue that shows in the faces unique to the sexual experience? I need to see more orgasms. Keep my eyes open while I or my partner cums. Watch more porn. Not commercial porn, though. Those orgasms are largely if not almost entirely faked. I need someone to video my face while I cum. Jo might. I do a quick review of our Hippie Hollow video. She did. I had a couple of good orgasms while Carl was fucking me in that standing position. She got my face up close during both of them, and Carl's shaft pumping during his. Wonderful! I could use more, though. More angles. Even more faces. Maybe I could shoot her having an orgasm. Maybe we can catch our men in the act. There should be opportunities for study. It's a worthy cause, it's art!
Smiling, I go back to my current study. Erotica is for another commission, I need to figure out how to make this one work. And maybe I have. Maybe she can be a mermaid in spirit, she doesn't have to look like a Disney character. It's an idea that frees me. I work faster now, the composition starts to come together, the posture on the rock, the dual view of both the surface and the sea floor, the swimming fish, the octopus, the sweep of the lady's back and waist, the breeze just barely catching her hair.
I use Inkscape, Gimp, and Blender to put my ideas together, I want to construct a detailed 3-D rendering of what my mind is seeing before I translate to oil on canvas. It will take two or three more days, at least.
I'm in a zone now, and the time flies by. I almost miss lunch. With a grunt of minor exasperation, I throw on an old pair of shorts and a tight top, tie on my running shoes and grab a bottle of cold water out of the refrigerator. I have a course I take that's calculated to get me back home in half an hour. In this heat, that's about all anybody could endure. I am drenched and dripping when I get back, and I smell. I need a cool shower before I can do any more work, or even use my chair.
Refreshed and dry, I quickly put together a tuna sandwich and a glass of milk, and as I sit down to eat the phone rings. I immediately remember. "Hello?"
A very deep, melodic, very male, voice replies on the other end. "Tethys, my beautiful woman. I'm sorry for the delay, I fear I'm calling you too late."
"No," I assure him. "This is the perfect time."
"I wanted to make sure you were still available this afternoon, but I didn't want to assume too much. If you are, I'll have a surprise for you. But I don't want to inconvenience you."
"It's good, you can come over as soon as you can, I just have to make sure I get to my workout this evening."
"No problem. W... I'll see you shortly, my love."