The Artists Studio Ch 02

This story wandered a bit in the telling, and is more a collection of vignettes than a single thread. Those readers who know my Library story arc will recognise some characters in cameo roles right at the end. Their presence has a logic of sorts - it appears that I inhabit a singular universe.

-- ooo OOO ooo --

Following the weekend class at Sophia's studio, I began to draw more often, in a space made in a spare room.

Always in the back of my mind was the power of evocation that a drawing or painting could produce, as proven in Sophia's studio that weekend. The drawings we produced dripped with eroticism and raw sexuality, and the fascination of seeing each different artist's interpretation of the same period and space in time, and of the same model, was revealing beyond any simple description, and revealing far beyond what a photograph could reveal. A photograph captures the flash of a moment in time, while a drawing penetrates time with a much longer gaze and depth. And a painting digs deeper still and reveals both the mind and being of the model as well as the soul and heart of the artist.

Nicola's drawing of Joanna, for example, was as delicate and fanciful as that young woman's gaze, with flitting detail and the ghost of an idea, yet so revealing of both women. Her drawing focused on those areas of the model's skin that held the greatest fascination for the artist - that throat and the line of the jaw, the delicate lobes of Joanna's ears. By drawing those little succulent drops of flesh, it was as if Nicola was taking them between her own lips and nipping them gently with her little white teeth, and sucking them into her own hot mouth. The gentle shading on her subject's neck, there on her paper, was the faint blushing trail of Nicola's lips on that throat, with delicate bites tasting the skin.

Nicola was like a little cat splashing milk and chasing wool, her tongue and lips soft in her mind and in her vision of the model, and by wishing in her head that she was caressing her subject, and stroking so gently with her light pencil, that passion showed on the paper. And by showing it on the paper, Joanna felt that delicate touch as if it was on her own skin, and she reacted to it.

Her skin faintly blushed under Nicola's gaze, and there it was, captured in faint pinks and lilac shadows in the drawing. And Joanna's eyes were soft for the girl. As she lay there under the girl's gaze and listening to the soft sweep of the pencil tip on the page - a tiny sound like the drift of a light breeze on her naked skin - her body in turn yielded up an offering.

Joanna's nipples peaked and tightened under the caress of the girl's light touch, and her lips too were full and sweet tasting, and the touch of the pencil and pale colours on the paper captured the scent and succulence of a fresh fruit, and it looked as if one could bite into those drawn nubs of tight nipple and lick a delicate tongue over those sweet lips, like strawberries dripping with juice, red and warm.

Joanna ripened under the young girl's gaze and the valley between her breasts was softly covered by the finest down, like the furred skin of a peach, and the roundness on the rising swell of her breast was taut and firm. Nicola's drawing captured the delicate subtlety of the fair fair hair in that cleft and her pale colours swept a blush of rising blood warmed skin to Joanna's throat, there on the page and there on the woman on the couch.

Sarah's painting of me, by contrast, was a swirl of shape and colour, and a vibrance of thick lines of paint, brushed on in long vigorous lengths which captured the thrust of my limbs and the taut tightness of muscle on my chest and torso. Once my erection was pulled hard against my gut by the sweep of her wet brush, like a long spit trailed tongue right up the shaft of my cock, her painting was colour rich and vivid.

She saw a dark shadow beneath my rising balls, hidden, dark, musk tight and scented, and on her canvas there was a great slash of vibrant purple for the darkness between my legs, and a rounded, brighter redness that was her look at my domed cock head, caught in a rise of colour. Her painted shaft was long and prideful of me, and even in her strong womanhood that needed no man, she at least honoured my length and heat, and painted a thickness, even if she did not want it.

Her painting was like a bruise of colours, vibrant and thickly brushed, slabs of paint like a slap on my flesh. Sarah was painting out her anger, I think, and her rich palette was a punishment and an ugliness. She was not painting my skin, she was painting my flesh, and beneath my flesh. I was flayed and exposed before her fierce gaze, and her painted wetness was like a drench of blood. Her vision of me, on her page, was ripe with revenge and I was splayed and opened up before her.

Her painting was not of the surface of my flesh but of the depths beneath my skin, my flayed muscles and bones. I was everyman, and she was a begrudged woman, fierce and powerful in her fight back. Her painting of me was of a sacrifice, me before her, but also of a strength fighting her strength. We were matched, she and I, but would not want the other in the flesh, but would respect that flesh for what it was. Sarah was a complicated woman, and her painting of me was complex and powerful.

And Sophia's image, that started as an image of me but was overtaken by an image of herself, hot and dark, her charcoal great sweeps of dust and shadow and shade. Her vision of herself dripped sexual heat off her paper, and her portrayal was near life size, for she used a huge sheet of parchment on her easel. My thighs, that she used as a seat for her taut ass, were dark into the background, while her legs, which she portrayed spread wide and held upwards and away from her sides, were long and slender. The only parts of me that she had left clear and detailed in her drawing were my hands; these she had drawn clutching around each of her upper calves, holding her legs splayed and wide open.

She had drawn her clefted sex and the ridge to her asshole, and the key highlight of the whole picture was the rounded shaft of my cock embedded deep in her ass, catching the light above the dark hair of my balls, swollen and full. Her fuck hard up her ass was the visual centre of this graphic image, and it was crude and powerful, erotic and sensual, revealing a truth from her soul even as it portrayed a fantasy from her mind.

She had drawn her torso with powerful curves of her charcoal, rounded tone and darks about her navel, and curved ridges of muscle to her ribs. Her breasts were drawn big and full and high, and she had exaggerated the length and thickness of her nipples, hard with her arousal. In her drawing, even though those dark nubs were impossibly large, the drawing would have been wrong if she had portrayed them realistically. She showed her gaze strong and direct, looking straight back at the viewer.

By challenging the watcher so directly, Sophia made that staring visitor a participant in her fuck, for who would not want their hard prick deep in that proud body? Ah fuck, Sophia so proud, so arrogant, so confident, she deserved herself in this portrait. Her portrait was of an ass in repose. A proud woman, she would not let others portray her, but would do justice only to herself.

But those drawings were done, that coven disbanded and separated, those women gone.

-- ooo OOO ooo --

I found myself on the bus, in the street, buying the Saturday paper in the local news agent, and wishing I was a better artist. I wanted to go up to people and say, "you are just beautiful, I want to draw you. Can I?" But I'm nowhere near good enough an artist to ever do their beauty justice, so I never do.

Unfortunately, I did not have easy access to any life models, so I found myself browsing through blogs and websites looking for images to copy, and as time passed, to inspire. I slowly learned my way around proportion and shape, and started to identify photographs that might echo some elements of a live person in front of me, with real shifting light, and real shadows, and real movement, and real stillness.

As I began to draw, especially on weekends when I was there in the light, I began to see, slowly and over the course of time, a strangeness in my drawings. At first I could not place it, or figure out what it was - it was an elusive thing. And then I found it.

Looking closely at a drawing I had left on my easel for several days, I saw that I had drawn a palimpsest. I had worked on this drawing over the days, and I must have subconsciously worked at it harder than I realised, for when I looked closely I could see a faint shadow of the drawing beside and under itself. I must have worked at the drawing, and then, when I was reworking outlines and edges, I had cut the image back with an eraser. For there was a faint shadow of itself, drawn there on the paper. Or rather, an erasure there on the paper. It was a unconscious thing, for I had no clear memory of doing it.

And then, on another drawing, I found it again. A faint shadow of the drawing on the page, this one done in charcoal, but the shadow was about one inch away from the dark tones and edges of the sketch. It was as if the image had been lifted from the paper, and moved an inch or so to one side, and then placed down, leaving a faint impression in its previous place. It was a curious effect.

But it was a strangeness, for I had no recall of doing it. Over a number of weekends I found myself doing it repeatedly, but only on drawings started during an afternoon when the sunlight streamed in the window, never in an evening when it was dark outside and I was working in an artificial light. I must be putting myself into some kind of odd trance state, where time passes but I do not, some strange fugue that I could not recall. Some small madness?

I didn't mention it to anybody, because it was scarcely believable, and I did not believe it myself. But then, one morning, after the moon was high, I found such a change in one drawing that I knew that there was something really wrong. I could not be doing this. The drawing was a small image of a nude girl, done on a small A4 sheet of paper. I had drawn her standing, one hand resting on a hip, a tilt of leg and a toss of hair, and small, provocative breasts.

But when I came down to the studio the next day, the image was facing the opposite direction, and the hand was straight by her side, no longer resting on her hip. It was as if the image had lifted itself from the page, rearranged itself, and then placed itself back onto the paper, quite different. This was madness.

I gazed at that drawing, not moving, for about ten minutes, desperately trying to recall every moment of its creation the night before, but for the life of me I had no memory of doing this picture as I found it now before me. I took out the reference photograph, and yes, it was as I had drawn the image, but not as the image was now. There in the photograph was the girl's hand, hung off her hip with elbow thrust out, fingers curling soft onto her thighs. Those slight breasts with their perky, thrusting nipples, those delightful shapes, they were facing to the right. I had drawn the image because she was vibrant, sassy and lively, a slender young thing facing the viewer provocatively.

But now the drawn page before me was of a sadder being, her face down-turned and a slump on her shoulders. This was the image of a tired girl, saddened even, no longer a sprite. I could not place this drawing in my memory, it was not from my hand, but there it was, evidence in front of my own eyes. There it was, a drawn figure, sad. But not my drawing.

I backed away from the easel, fearful for my own mind, and as I did so I bumped a table and some motes of dust bounced into the air and swirled on an eddy of air. I saw the spiralling dust in the corner of my eye, for the swirl was caught in a sunbeam leaning in from the window and falling upon the easel, just glancing the edge of the paper pinned there. What was that small movement? The little shaft of light touched on the drawing, just on the edge of it, and something shifted in my vision.

I went back closer to the easel, looking hard for I had seen movement but no movement could be there. And there in front of my own eyes, as utter proof of insanity, there it was. The drawn image of the girl now had her head raised, looking at me, the viewer, beseechingly, Her hand and arm drawn outstretched, as if reaching out. No, no, no, this could not be, I had not drawn this picture, not this girl reaching out.

I backed out of the room, not daring to take my eyes of the drawing. Nothing happened, even though I feared it might. I snapped the lights off and made my way elsewhere in the house. I needed sleep, for my mind must have been fevered, and I was imagining things. That night I dreamed, and there was a running girl in my dream, naked and slender, the girl from my drawing. She just ran through my head, a momentary dream and a whisper, and I slept.

The next morning I went to the studio, and once again there was a shadow on the page. The image was as I had drawn it, but there were two shades alongside it, as if the drawing had been erased twice and redrawn. On the floor nearby, a trail of tiny black smudges led from the base of the easel into the room. Dust on the floor, from dropped charcoal, surely. But weird, strange and unsettling.

-- ooo OOO ooo --

That afternoon I again set up a page for a drawing, and the sunlight was streaming in the windows, motes of dust eddying in the corner of my eye, lazily moving in the heating air in the room.

This time I had a larger sheet of paper, and sketched a picture of a naked woman sitting on a simple wooden chair, her legs spread wide and open, challenging the observer. This one I coloured with strong bold tones, the lips of her sex a gash of red, crimson red, and her small breasts were pink budded, nipples tight. I do not often draw faces, as I am still trying to get their proportions and features right, but this picture had a bold portrait of a woman gazing off to her left, not looking at the painter, not looking at me. It was not Sophia, but her boldness was probably in the back of my mind as I drew and coloured this portrait.

The image was unlike any I had drawn before, and bore no resemblance to the photo that inspired it. In particular the face, with big over sized eyes, had a personality of its own. The portrait was of no one I knew, but it was, without doubt, a portrait of someone. I was pleased with the painting, perhaps the first one that I could call something more than a drawing.

I stepped back from the easel to see this portrait from a distance, and yes, she was crude and erotic. It was not a sensual picture, the colours were too vibrant and up front for that, and both the bold gaze and the spread wide cunt with its slash of crimson red in the centre of her spread wide legs, it was almost an affront. It was not a polite image, not at all. But then, maybe, I'm not really polite. My drawings certainly aren't.

I had been working on the portrait for a couple of hours, and needed a drink and bite to eat. As I left the studio to go through to the kitchen, I thought I heard the soft wet sound that skin makes when it has been stuck to a smooth surface, and lifts away, sliding and slick.

But I was through the door. In the kitchen I made up a mug of strong filtered coffee, and sweetened it with dark chilli flavoured chocolate, making a spicy, heady concoction. Returning to the studio, for I had a couch there and would often sit with my feet up and look at my current drawing, or read my latest book; returning to the studio I heard the sound of a wooden chair dragged along the floor. What the fuck, nobody's home but me, what was that?

Fuck, what the...? The coffee spilled, and my hand shook, holy shit, what was this? There in front of the easel, its size all wrong like something down a long corridor with the perspective all skewed, there was a dragged chair, and sitting astride it, my painted woman, solid and tangible. Her legs were spread, just as in my drawing, and her cunt was open and red, just as in my drawing.

Behind her, on the easel, the paper was blank, just the faintest ghost of the original image. She gazed at me, with her big, unnatural eyes, dark. So fucking dark, for I had drawn only the smallest whites in her eyes, but pupils and iris drawn huge. Her thighs were solid and massive and her torso and breasts smaller. She was big thighed and deeply cunted, just as I had drawn her, with less interest in her breasts.

There was silence in the room, and the only movement the drops of coffee spilling to the floor and motes of dust spiralling in a shaft of sunlight which just touched the leg of the chair, making it bright. Silence, the only sound the intake of my breath, and the wet landing of the coffee drops, tiny and fallen, on the floor, my hearing acute.

She slowly gestured, and her hand and arm movements were unnatural and only just learned, but enough that I got her meaning. Sit on the couch. I had the momentary sense to place the coffee cup on a side table, but then just sat, slumped. Silent myself, for I was speechless. Perhaps the only sound I heard was my heartbeat, a speeding pulse and faster.

I was aware of my balls rising with fear, and my mouth drying. But spellbound. Sophia's studio had shown me how a painting or drawing could directly affect the flesh of a model, so it was only a small jump to understand what was happening here. But to comprehend it, that was a different thing entirely.

This painted woman, all gash and colour, and her powerful eyes direct and commanding and holding my eyes from ever looking away, this spread legged woman sat before me. And I realised that, while I was looking at her, she could do nothing else. For I had drawn her seated, so that was all I could see. I had drawn her black eyes unblinking, so she never blinked as she gazed at me.

Christ, her eyes would be so dry, so I had to look away, to give her a time to blink. While my back was turned, it was clear she could move, for how else could that chair have dragged? How else could she have climbed out of that page on my easel? I looked back, and the expression on her face had changed. It was undefinable, but perhaps she was thankful that I had looked away and allowed her to blink, for her eyes looked wetter, shining.

I had drawn her with her arms raised to her head, touching her hair, but they were lowered to her lap now, one hand resting on a wide spread thigh, the other hand with fingers just touching the top of her widening lips. Her legs were spread, and my eyes were drawn to her vivid sex, for that was my intention as the artist. As I gazed, fascinated by this apparition in front of me, my drawing somehow come alive and moving, I slowly realised that when my look was direct, all was still in front of me.

But every time I glanced away, or looked longer away, when I turned back, there had been movement. So I found that I could allow her to move, to shift the look on her face, and to slowly, slowly move her fingers, hands or limbs. Every time I looked away she would shift, and slowly we picked up a rhythm between us.

I did not control where her fingers strayed, except to the extent that there was an intent in my original painting. And the intent of this painting was clear. The hot, erotic, brazenly sexual woman in my portrait was demanding just one thing of me now. She wanted me to watch and glance away, stare and then look away, so that her fingers could lower themselves and spread apart her cunt lips and find a glistening wetness, and her other hand to widen its fingers and pull and tighten upon one breast and nipple, and for her head to arch back in a slow, silent ecstasy.