Emily May

I could feel my body warming up as I biked up Townsend St. after getting off the 6am train to San Francisco. The city was just starting to wake up at 7:15 when I arrived, perfect time to avoid the onset of taxis that were sure to flood the streets at 7:30 for rush hour.  It was freezing cold that December morning, my drawing board slung over my back, breath fogging up my glasses as I raced up Van Ness to get to my intimidating drawing class.I started to loose my breath, sucking in the thick cold air was burning my chest as I pumped the pedals up the hill to the warehouse building. I ran into the building with three minutes to spare, always racing against the clock. Wiped off the sweat from my brow, unloaded my drawing board from the sling back bag and started preparing my charcoal.  I had been doing this for three long months; two hour commute each way to school, 12-14 hour days and homework for hours over the weekend and risking life and limb biking everywhere in San Francisco. I’d always be thinking about the challenging day ahead of me, whose work I’d be staring at in part envy part amazement. This morning was different.

Today was the last day of class, our finals were due and the ultimate critique from our teacher was coming down upon us in less than an hour. Of course we had to start out with warm up drawings even though we wouldn’t be doing any lengthy studies today. I was a newbie that fall of 2005 and it showed. I had been doing art since I was in 2^ndgrade, even won a few art contests but realism was not my forte. My teacher at the Academy had one sole objective, which was to train his students to see, to really see what they were looking at and replicate it on paper. For a time it seemed I wasn’t looking at the same object as everyone else and that is what reflected on my paper. I worked until wee hours of the morning on my drawing homework, re-doing and perfecting and re-doing and crying. I was so frustrated for two months and then I saw the light, literally. I saw what the light did to an object it bathed. I saw the core shadows; I saw the low-lights, the highlights, even the reflected light that barely presents itself on the bottom of an object.

The warm up drawing was already making my arm tired, I had been in this same building the night before until midnight dutifully stressing out and perfecting my final project, the four hours of sleep was showing on my face. After forty minutes he shut off the spot light and ushered his charcoal smudged students into the next room. Set up in a semi circle were twenty drawing horse, bare and lonely waiting to support our works, our final grades. We all hesitantly pulled out our framed drawings; my face was already tomato red, a sure sign of performance anxiety. I carefully set mine down and the red drained out of my face and a large, joyous grin took its place.

Instead of cringing at the final project of drawing a portrait, I delighted in it; I reveled in the challenge of depicting a face so well some people thought it was a photograph. And I did it.  A Middle Eastern man filled my paper;  he was older with a long wispy white beard and a mustached that framed his full lips. He looks dignified, his eyes, under heavy brows felt as if they could infiltrate your soul and might be the reason for the satisfied smirk on his face. His headdress is a rough fabric and reflects the light ever so subtly yet casts a dark deep shadow on his creased forehead. His skin seems weathered yet firm and the wrinkles that form under his right eye were the most intricately detailed features I have ever drawn, and I loved every last painstaking minute. He is a face that belongs to National Geographic but through his eyes, his detailed, reflective eyes, I saw everything I needed to see and through mine I drew him like I had never drawn before. As my teacher called out my name I could see the surprise spread across his face as I walked behind my piece.

Charcoal on Paper 18 x 24

Understandably, as proud as I was, I was still scared to the point where a mere shadow of a voice came out of my mouth “this is mine.” I walked away fairly unscathed, he had some great pointers and gave me an A-, I was to the moon, walking on clouds, floating down Van Ness on my way home to celebrate. I unveiled a mini-art show on Christmas for my parents to see what I had done that semester, in other words why they took on $12,000 in student loans for me. I saved this piece for last, my prize, my pain, my triumph and my mother cried. Some may say that a mother’s tears are no feat; well some don’t know my mother very well. It was a feat and the piece changed the way I felt about art, the way I felt about my own art and the possibilities that were now at my fingertips.