This writer sure did love exclamation points. I sigh and crack my neck, then squint past the easel up at the double doors of the engineering school. If I read the class schedules right online, I have about ten minutes until the bell rings and class lets out.
Ten minutes until I have to pretend to flirt with college kids, in order to write an article about how dating techniques from the 1950s apply nowadays. No pressure or anything. I heave another sigh, and then I decide that the only thing I can do at this point is have some fun with it, if possible.
I crack open the watercolors and mix a daub of water with a few of the colors. Then I cast my eye around campus. Whether the article recommends modern art or not, I’ve never been a fan of painting directly from my imagination. I prefer to at least have some real-world inspiration to focus on.
It’s been a while since I painted anything. I’ve been so busy pitching articles and scrambling to meet editorial deadlines lately, I don’t really have any time for hobbies or fun activities on the side. It’s just work work work, no play. And I’m fine with that, for the most part. Really. I love what I do.
But I did used to love art classes. I took them my junior and senior years as electives. Nothing too strenuous, not the types of classes actual art majors had to take, which kept them in the studio from morning until night. Just the fun elective kinds of classes, which gave me an excuse to focus on something creative that didn’t involve words. Something that I didn’t plan to build my whole career around.
It gave me a welcome respite, especially during the madness of my thesis-writing period. When I had to break my back putting in ten hour days at the library on top of my classes, art was a nice little escape. Somewhere my brain could relax.
I try to channel that energy again as I settle on painting the big maple tree outside of the engineering building. Unlike the squat, ugly gray structures all around it, that tree has natural beauty. It’s stately, with a thick trunk and expansive branches. I can only hazard a guess at how old it must be—at least a hundred. It boggles my mind that something has managed to survive here, amidst so much unnatural concrete, for so long.
Plus, it’s beautiful. Autumn officially began last week, but this week, it feels like it skipped straight past fall into hard winter. But unlike many of the leaves in town, which just went from green or greenish yellow to dead and ugly brown, this tree has managed to change colors properly. Its fat red maple leaves have gone bright scarlet around the top, like a halo, and trail down to deep, burnt oranges around the middle, with a smattering of bright yellows mixed in.
It takes me a while to mix the colors correctly. Once I have them, I start to blend from the yellows first—let those dry, and then work my way up through orange to the deeper reds.
As I paint, I forget about the chill in the air. I forget that my hands, now exposed, feel numb and tingle with each hoist of the brush. I forget everything except the feel of the brush stroking across the canvas, and the paint slowly expanding from dots of color into a real, recognizable image.
I’m so deeply entranced by the process, that I don’t even hear the bell ring to signal the end of classes. I barely notice the chatter as students spill out of the engineering building and tromp past. All I can see is the tree; all I can feel are my hands, creating something out of nothing.
Art is a little bit like magic, I think.
That’s what I’m thinking when a tingle sparks at the back of my head, and I realize, belatedly, that there’s someone standing behind me. Very close to me, in fact.
“That’s pretty,” a voice says, low and masculine.
I swallow hard and lower the brush. My mind skips to the next part of the article. What did it say to do after Step 1? Why didn’t I read ahead to review Step 2 again?
Probably because I didn’t think Step 1 would actually lead any guys on this campus to talk to me. Crap.
I vaguely remember something about smiling a lot, and a word of advice about listening more than you talk… But how were you supposed to begin the conversation? Talking about art again?
Oh well, too late now to check the article. So I plaster on my most winning smile—I’m sure 1950s housewives everywhere would be proud—and swivel on my portable stool to face the guy behind me. “Do you think so?” I ask, in what I hope is a convincingly demure tone.