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The Story behind the Two Nudes 1985

StonedSmeagol

Published: Jun 30, 2021

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This story is true. Hope you like the drawings and story.😉👄👁

When I was in year 12 back in college, about the only thing I was good at was music, which I love very much, and art, which was always my favourite pass-time. Our portfolios included landscapes; 1 ocean and 1 of hills and fields, with acrylics and pastels on paper only. There was 2 drawings of animals; I did a bear in crayon and a cougar in colour pencil, we had to do with crayons and colour pencils on paper only. We also had to do 2 night cityscapes with pen and ink on stretched canvas at 16” x 23” inches (A2), which all our project sizes were. Another task was with pen only on paper, a drawing done with the technique pointillism/dot art only, no lines whatsoever. It had to be a drawing of a woman's face in full smile (not too ridiculous though). And the last task was with pencil only; the task was for detail, shading and depth, and atmosphere. We could choose anything we wanted for this task; some chose insects, others chose animals, and others chose architecture etc. Not me, I chose female nudes.👄👁

Other than the pointillism task, which took like a million years to do, I was highly relying on the 2 drawings I was going to do for high marks. I had 2 photos to work from for my concepts and layouts, they were appropriate nude photos, so I stuck with them (my parents said they were fine, good enough for me). When I eventually completed my art portfolio, I took it back to school a week before marking by the assessors. The teacher got us to open our portfolios so he could see how we went with our tasks. When he got to mine, he was not impressed with the 2 nude pencil drawings at all. He said they were too inappropriate to display and asked me to remove them and do 2 new works, I refused to do so and said that I was going to keep them in my portfolio. The other students came over for a look; they looked at the teacher and asked what was wrong with them, they thought they were great. The teacher was more into Picasso, Van Gogh etc. I showed him a Frazetta book one day, he thought the art was dull and too violent for people to look at. Pretty much describes the teacher in a nutshell.😒🙄

When the day came for our portfolios to be assessed and marked, the teacher came over saying that I was going to fail because of the nude drawings. I simply stood there waiting for my turn. There were 4 assessors, a man and young woman from Japan, and 2 women from the Auckland Art Academy (NZ). I was starting to get nervous; the pointillism drawing was bugging me, but mainly the 2 nude pencil drawings I did. Eventually, it was my turn to be assessed and marked; the 4 of them stood quietly as they looked at my portfolio, and were talking quietly, looking at each other here and there, then all looking at me...no pressure. Two of them came over to me, the Japanese man, and a woman from the academy. They both stood and stared at the art, then the man approached me, “Did you draw these?” pointing at the nudes, “These two, and this one?” also pointing at the pointillism drawing. I said yes. The woman came over to join us and asked, “Did you by any chance trace these 2two nudes, or have someone help you outside of school?”, I simply replied no, but I did get the poses from photos. They said thank you and joined the other assessors, talking about what they had just seen. The man called me over to join them, I was nervous as hell now, and he asked if I had any training before. I told him an uncle of mine showed me how to use pencils and pens. He shook my hand and said, “Beautiful artwork, beautiful”, I was so stoked to hear him say that, and gave me 97% for the portfolio. They were happy with how I did all the required tasks; the pointillism drawing was a big factor, but in the end, it was the 2 nudes. The very drawings the teacher said would fail me. The 3 drawings were placed into the 'Auckland Herald Newspaper', the nudes made page 3, and the pointillism made page 4. I was so proud of that moment, as well as the looks on the assessors faces when they saw my portfolio, it will be something I will never forget.👄👁✍️🖊🥰