RE: Trailer Trash 57 pt 6 (Patreon)

    While yesterday’s class had been syllabus and orientation, today in Tabitha’s sixth period Art 2D they were to start drawing. Drawing boards and oversized sheets of paper—thick enough that she thought of it almost as paperboard—were distributed from the store room by the table leaders, and everyone made a point to appear to pay diligent attention to Mr. Peterson as he stood up and demonstrated the correct technique for holding a pencil.

    Bemused looks were exchanged between the students as they tried to gauge whether or not their teacher was being serious, but these were replaced with blank looks and furrowed brows of consternation as he began to elaborate.

    “How you’ve been taught to hold a pen or pencil for handwriting your whole life can be used for drawing, but it may not be the best way,” Mr. Peterson held his pencil out in the air as if to write and did a slow turn so that everyone in the art room could see his hand posture. “Your grip for writing will give you the most control, but the tight-in technique of controlling your pencil with your fingers also has the most limited range of movement.”

    “What?” Vanessa whispered out her apparent skepticism to their table. “What’re we s’posed to use, our toes?”

    “You may have noticed your drawing sheets there are very large, much larger than your eight and a half by eleven inch standard paper—” Mr. Person continued. “That is because ladies and gentlemen you will be drawing large, and when you are drawing large, it is better to control where your pencil goes with your wrist or even your entire arm for maximum range of movement ‘cross the canvas. Yes, table four?”

    “Are we allowed to just like draw holding normally?” A girl at the fourth table asked.

    “I am not the pencil technique gestapo, I am a teacher,” Mr. Peterson brandished his fearsome grin to his class. “There are different and sometimes better ways to wield your pencil—and now you know, so you can’t come crying to me later, sayin’, ‘oh wise and great Mister Peterson, why is it so difficult for me to draw? Why am I having so much trouble?’ Well, bein’ made aware of other pencil techniques is a start, hah.”

    Like many of the other kids throughout the room, Tabitha frowned and looked down at her hand as it held her pencil. The way she held her pencil had never been something she’d given a second thought, and wielding it differently after an entire extra lifetime of holding it the habitual way seemed to raise the hurdle even higher for her. Though as a writer she plied most of her words via a keyboard, there were still years upon years of writing out various things by hand instilled into her a certain way.

    “Holdin’ your pencil the way you do for writing is optimal for handwriting,” Mr. Peterson taught them. “Point down for the most precise lines, and your brain is somewhat trained into writin’ a certain size—we call it standard or college rule, the l’il blue lines you’ve been scribblin’ in for most of your life.

    “As an artiste you’re no longer constrained by all that boring mumbo jumbo, you’ve got to learn to be a little more free,” He waggled his drawing hand up and down in broad swoops as he let out a chuckle. “Free to use the entire pencil instead of just the tip, free to use more range of motion with your hand than you’re used to for writing, and learning how to fine-control that movement.”

    “Uhh, the tip is the only part of the pencil that draws, though,” Vanessa complained, holding up her hand.

    “Yeah,” A girl at another table loudly agreed—though Tabitha saw her expression was a teasing one rather than Vanessa’s sour look.

    “Oh, you are so wrong, table six,” Mr. Peterson grinned his huge grin. “The very tip is the pointiest bit and draws yer precise lines—but, what if you’re tryin’ to do some shading? You’ll want to fill in large areas of your paper with pencil, and holding your pencil instead like—this—allows you to use the side of the pencil, allows you to press down more pencil lead, graphite, whatever, in broad strokes which each go. This is also how you control your line weight, but that’s probably a bit more advanced for most of you monkeys—heck, I’ll be lucky if I can have you apes keep your pencils outta your nose this whole semester.”

    “Pffft—”

    “Hey—I see that, you at table three. Keep that outta there kid, you don’t know where it’s been. C’mon, now.”

    “Eddie—oh my god, stop. Hah ha—”

    “That’s still technically using the tip, though,” Vanessa muttered under her breath. “S’just the side of the tip. It’s still the tip.”

    “Now, I see some mighty doubtful looks when I glance around,” Mr. Peterson laughed. “You’re all thinking—well, s’gonna be a big ol’ pain to relearn how to hold the pencil when I’m already comfortable doin’ it the way I been doin’ it. I’ll just hold it the way I’ve always held it. What can go wrong?!”

    Tabitha wasn’t alone in putting on a small wince of guilt at hearing that.

    “Well, I’ll tell ya what’ll happen—” Mr. Peterson said. “You’ve got these big ol’ sheets of paper, and you’ll start drawin’ big, you’ll scale what you’re drawing to the area with which you have to draw in. Right? But, little by little your details’ll start to shrink, gettin’ tinier and tinier. Your proportions’ll start gettin’ wonky.

    “Then, you’ll take a step back, and look at what you’ve done and say to me—‘oh great and mighty Mister Peterson—well, the LEFT side of my drawing where I started looks normal, but then when it gets over towards the RIGHT, everything starts to pinch up and go all tiny. BWUAHH?! WHAT HAPPENED?!’ And then, I’ll look on with my infinite wisdom and benevolence and tell you that you started out drawing, but partway through, you relapsed to yer normal handwriting technique, and s’like the rest of your picture shrunk up in a washing machine, an’ nothin’ don’t fit no more!”

    Tabitha laughed along with the rest of the class, but inwardly she was extremely impressed. This was what she had meant when she admitted to Coach Baylor that she didn’t think she was cut out to teach. Mr. Peterson didn’t just love the subject at hand, he was also great at communicating that love to others in a way they could digest. The brawny man looked like he was having genuine fun teaching, he understood the material and was well versed in translating his experience into ways that total laymen could still parse the meaning from.

    Not even JUST that, he also has to corral a room of young teenagers and keep their attention. He puts on voices, he keeps his expression very animated so that he remains engaging, he injects in just enough humor for levity to keep what he’s saying from ever getting too dry and technical. If some of the other subjects were taught like this, it wouldn’t be so easy to just start zoning out while they lecture on and on in that monotonous droning voice.

    A part of it seemed to be enormous personal confidence and charisma—but Tabitha recognized that it also wasn’t just that. After all, the big and macho Coach Cooke was surely confident and charismatic in his own way, but did that necessarily make him a great teacher? She didn’t think so.

    I managed to throw all of my enthusiasm into trying to make everything interesting for Hannah when I went through various things with her—even that was a little exhausting. It takes a lot of serious thought to convey things in the best way for her. To a lesser extent, it’s the same when I communicate that way with my four cousins. As the SCOPE of how many kids I’m trying to lead through something increases, the difficulty likewise ramps up. I can’t imagine trying to direct an entire classroom!

    “Alright, alright—simmer down, folks,” Mr. Peterson’s voice cleared the chatter throughout the room. “Today, you’ll start off your first drawing project—drawing a subject from sight; onto yer paper. If I can direct your attention towards the center of each of your tables!”

    Vintage glass bottles with decorative molding, long-fluted champagne glasses, a martini glass, and an oversized empty wine bottle were collected atop a sheet of paper in the middle of each table. Along with prominent DO NOT TOUCH!! placards, the outline of the bottom of each glass vessel was traced upon the paper they rested on, to ensure their placement was exact even through different days with many different class periods. 

    “Yes sir, you will be looking at those from the perspective of your seat and then drawing them onto your paper,” Mr. Peterson clapped his hands. “Pick a point to start at and go, people. We’ll be working on these until Friday, Friday we’ll be doin’ somethin’ new.”

    Then, they were off—left to their own devices to attempt drawing. The lone boy at their table, Eric, had started drawing early without permission, working away at capturing the bottles and glasses while they had been listening to Mr. Peterson explain pencil grips. Clarissa was withdrawn and not presenting herself as open or talkative and she simply began creating lines on the paper, while Tabitha, Stacy, and Vanessa exchanged uneasy looks with one another.

    “But,” Vanessa huffed. “I don’t know how to draw. So, what, I just—try doing it, and hope it comes out okay? This is so frustrating. Annoying.”

    “I… guess?” Tabitha tried not to grimace. “We have to start somewhere with it, after all. Mr. Peterson is going around to the tables and helping people?”

    “Hoo-boy,” Stacy blew out a big breath. “Uh. Here goes then, I guess?”

    “Eric—let me see,” Vanessa demanded. “This isn’t fair—and you cheated, you like, jumped the gun.”

    “It’s a drawing class,” Eric leaned in so he could hunch his arm and shoulder over the drawing to prevent her from peeking. “They gave us paper, the stuff in the middle there is obviously for us to draw. S’not rocket science, sheesh.”

    “Sheesh!” Tabitha repeated.

    “Sheesh,” Stacy joined in. “Sheesh oh man.”

    “Sheesh,” Vanessa echoed as well. “Well. Whatever. S’not gonna be my fault if it winds up looking like crap!”

    Picking an ‘outermost corner point’ as her starting position, Tabitha eyeballed the lip of the martini glass… and began to draw.

    Holy crap.

    Her first line, which had been so bold and confident, wasn't quite the right angle it needed to be—then, upon flipping her pencil around and hurrying to erase it she discovered she had been pressing too hard. The line of graphite pressed into her drawing sheet was one of those stubborn ones that didn’t want to erase the whole way, even after furious scrubbing with the pink end of her pencil and creating murky specks of eraser sheddings she had to swipe away with the back of her hand.

    Acting with a lighter hand this time, Tabitha redrew the line at maybe the correct angle, then followed the contour of the martini glass in towards the thin stem. How long should this vertical line be? She wasn’t sure, and without the confidence to accurately gauge the measurements of objects at a glance, she spent an awkward minute looking back and forth again and again between her target and her drawing paper while the line she was creating crept into being at a snail’s place.

    Okay… I may have DRASTICALLY underestimated how difficult this is, Tabitha snuck a look over at Clarissa, and saw a poorly-proportioned child’s doodle of half a bottle depicted on her sheet. How does Alicia just… I don’t know, MAGIC stuff up, conjure it onto the page like it was always meant to be there? I think I need to go back through her stuff with like, new appreciation for her crazy amount of talent.

    “Ugggghh, this sucks, this sucks,” Vanessa scowled, furiously erasing everything she had drawn and starting over. “I’m gonna fail art. I’m totally, one hundred percent gonna fail this course. Stacy, yours looks good already, wow. Way better than mine. Eric—let me friggin’ see.”

    With a slightly pained smile, Tabitha returned to her drawing. People were still talking here and there, but conversation was now more subdued as everyone attempted to recreate their own various glasses and bottles. She did not think her own inclinations leaned towards this kind of artwork, but all the same it was interesting to try, and it did push her thoughts in new directions.

    “I should’ve moved my chair first,” Vanessa remarked with a scowl. “To like, get an easier angle. Where I’m sitting it’s like, the most complicated way to draw these. I hope he takes that into account when he’s grading. I mean—c’mon, look at this. That one’s behind the other one all weird.”

    I’ve learned a lot already! Tabitha marveled at the imperfect silhouette of a martini glass on her paper—it was a little crooked. I’ve learned some subtle little things about teaching, I’ve learned how I hold a pencil, and I’ve learned… that Vanessa can’t work and talk at the same time! Whenever she opens her mouth, her progress stalls, she’ll be lucky to have half of this done by Friday. Am I the same? It’s hard to say. I don’t try to speak while I draw, and even THINKING about everything like this feels like it’s slowing my sketch speed down. I don’t get into quite the same kind of focused ZEN MODE I do when I write—but, maybe that too will come with practice?

    It was something to ruminate upon, and perhaps something to ask Alicia about. Did practice and patience make drawing things become an effortless endeavor for her? Would applying that same logic work towards being social, or good with people; meeting people, making friends with classmates, being funny, teaching things to Hannah and her cousins? Hell—flirting. That was a big scary one, still, despite her teasing attempt earlier with Bobby… which had probably been a little too uncomfortably candid. Would things eventually be easy and effortless like she had always fantasized being popular would be?

    I sure hope so, Tabitha mused as her pencil drew the awkward outline of a bottle. I guess it still just mostly comes back to confidence. Experience. Because—where’s the fun of being popular, if to do so you’re exhausted and stressed the heck out by the actual process of it? Or, is that still just me locked into the INTROVERT way of thinking? As if that’s a handwriting technique that I just keep slipping back into out of habit, even when what I really want to do is draw freely?

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/// Will fix links and update guide page later, I have to mow before it rains again even though I just mowed a few days ago ughhh grass STOP, SLOW DOWN

/// Yes, Vanessa is written to just complain constantly. I wanted to make her easier to distinguish from Elena as a 'popular girl Tabitha tries befriending' and introduce different difficult 'qualities'. Elena was honestly kind of a social schemer and somewhat manipulative but was otherwise a pretty solid friend. Vanessa is annoying, and that's sadly a MUCH more realistic quality to find in someone, and a more... relatable hurdle for friendships. If Tabitha's gonna become more social, she has more hurdles and more varied hurdles to overcome!