My First Art Lesson

Many young children between the ages of six to fifteen bent over the tables in the sitting room, sketching and painting. Except for the Iban maid who had been busy attending to the kids, I was easily the oldest student around, overweight and shabby-looking at the age of forty-five. Sitting at a dim corner, under a strongly blowing air conditioner, I surfed the Internet on my Ipad to hide my discomfiture. One by one, more young faces poked their heads around the door, entered the house barefoot and took their seemingly assigned positions in the sitting room. 

When the art teacher, Mary Anne Vaz came, the kids greeted her and she frowned at the sight of where I sat. "This is not your place," said the well-known artist, while beckoning me to follow her to a little room beside her office. She handed me a beginner kit and threw me an annoyed look when I told her that I had not been aware of the need to bring my coloured pencils to the lesson.

            "Well," she said, "You may use mine. Remember to bring yours next time."

Mary Anne then took out a book from a shelf and put it on my desk. "You like portraits, right? I want you to sketch one of the portraits in this book and shade it."

"Thank you, Madam,"

"Now stand beside me and see how I sketch and shade."

 I stood next to her but she looked at me with furrowed brows and said, "You are standing too close to me. I don't have enough space to move my arms."

I moved a few steps back until the required distance was achieved. Then she started sketching. She held her pencil assuredly and within seconds the silhouette of a man appeared under her pencil tip on the pad. "When you give detailed strokes," she began. "Hold the pencil upright. Hold it sideways when you give broader strokes in the hair, under the cheekbones and under the neck."

“I see,” I said. “What I did in the past was so wrong!”

“Don’t speak,” She said curtly, glaring at me. “Pay attention when I sketch. Being silent and observant enables you to learn more.”

I shut my mouth immediately and watched her giving some finishing touches to the portrait. When she was done, she raised it up for me to see.

“Have you got that?” she said.

"Yes, "I said, nodding my head. "I will try to reproduce all that in my work."

"Good," she chirped. "You may start sketching now."

"All the portraits are all difficult to sketch," I said. "It's difficult to achieve an exact likeness."

"Don't try to be a perfectionist," chided Mary Anne. "It's meaningless to come up with a photographic artwork, which falls short of creativity."

            With that, she turned and spoke to the four Filipino kids who were in the same room as me. They spoke good English and looked intelligent with their bright, keen eyes. After setting them a task, Mary Anne flew out of the room, attending to the other kids.

Three weeks prior to the Art lesson, I had been searching for a person to teach me painting. I had not been drawing anything for the past twenty years and the long-forgotten interest had recently resurfaced in me. Due to the stark reality of life, I had chosen teaching over painting and the passing of time had almost reduced the interest to unrecognisable bits. A chance encounter with a Chinese ink artist had revived my interest in painting.  He encouraged me to pursue it again and offered himself to teach me. I was grateful to his gesture but had to say no to him because my field of interest was water colouring and acrylic painting. One night, while browsing through facebook, I found out that my ex lecturer, Mary Anne Vaz, was conducting an art class in my neighbourhood. I met up with her on messenger and told her about my interest in learning art from her. To my delight, she accepted me as her student and briefed me on what to do in her lessons. Mary Anne Vaz was famous in the local scenes of arts. Every now and then she posted her artwork on the social networking site, and I liked the spontaneity and randomness of her painting styles. In one of our subsequent conversations on WhatsApps, I told her that portrait painting had been my enduring passion and she said she would tailor her lessons in such a way that they catered to my interest. It was no wonder that she asked me to start with portrait-sketching in our first lesson. 

Sketching a person’s face was not an easy job, what more to say that I had just decided to draw again after a long gap of years. The face I was sketching had the features of a Roman’s – deep set eyes and a matching high bridged nose, plus a set of tightly pursed thin lips. I struggled through the sketching and the likeness I could achieve was very little. Disappointed, I tried to compensate for the weakness with good shading, but I could not manipulate the pencil as good as Mary Anne. 

Along the course of sketching a few curious parents and kids kept going in and out of the room, glancing at what I was doing. They wowed and ohhhed, motioning for others to look at my sketching. Deep in my heart I knew my sketching had nothing to shout about. It was a total drab compared to what I had done many years ago.

When the art teacher returned to check on my progress, she surprised me with this remark, “Not bad, you have a keen eye for small details.” I was a bit flattered, but what she said later dampened my spirits, “But your work could’ve been better if you are less decorative with the hair. You made it look fake!”

Obviously unhappy with my work, Mary Anne asked me to start drawing a new one. This time I tried to be as spontaneous with my shading and strokes, but the composition of my portrait was not balanced, and she fixed the problem by rubbing a large part of the model's ’head and applied some clever and apt shading to make it blend with the background. 

“Isn’t it much better now?” asked Mary Anne.

“Indeed,” I said. “It has some artistic touch to it.”

Smiling from ear to ear, Mary Anne clapped her hands a few times, announced that the art lesson was over and asked me to put up my work on a display board with those of the other students. My work easily stood out among the rest, but I did not feel proud of it. The other work, though done by kids many years younger than me, was brilliant for their age. My sketching and colouring could not hold a candle to them when I was their age.

“Come, all the first-timers,” said Mary Anne. “Stand in two lines at the middle of the sitting room and I will take your picture.”

A few kids and I arranged ourselves as instructed and she snapped our picture with her cell phone. Then we bade her good night and returned home. Back in my room, I checked on the latest updates on facebook and saw the group photograph as well as my portrait. Under the latter was a comment that said, ‘Marvellous job. You have a high potential!” I smiled and left her a thank-you message. Already, I was looking forward to the next lesson.

The experience in my first art lesson was no doubt humbling. I had to forget about the fact that I had once been good in art. Mary Anne Vaz was a skilful artist and whatever she demonstrated blew me away, making all my achievements in the past seem miniscule. From her I believed I could learn a great deal about sketching and painting, and to be successful I should be as humble as possible. I should also cast aside the urge to show her how good I was. Remember, I started from scratch like the other first timers. And I should show the same keenness as they did in her class. Filthy pride, you had no place as far as learning was concerned.

One thing for sure, I would work hard towards reaching my goal as a good artist. What I did in Mary Anne’s lesson had cast a stone of hope into the lake of my heart, creating a large circle of ripples that kept expanding from the centre. I would keep the passion spreading, and let it continue to inspire me along my journey of learning.