chapter 2

The next week, me and the other seven artists appeared one by one in the old dance hall to set up our easels and equipment in silence. She came in a few minutes later wearing the same underwear. We kept our eyes averted in respectful silence as she stepped up onto the platform and sat down in the same spot, at the same angle, in the same way, and looked at the same dark curl of grain of the wooden floorboard in front of me.

This week I took the time to lay down a comprehensive outline of her body. With a slow hand, I started from the base of her spine and traced up the curve of her back, over the rise of her shoulder, then down into the valley between her shoulder and neck, back down the outside of her thin, straight arm, encountering the bend of her locked elbow, down to the sudden right-angle of her hand and the curl of her fingers, back up the inside of her arm until I found the fold of her armpit. I started a new line from the base of her stomach where her thighs met it at right angles, then traced up the shallow dip of her stomach, up the underside of her ribcage, under and up her slight breasts and the ridge of her sternum until her other shoulder poked out from behind. Tracing back in, finding the curl towards her neck, then starting a new line under it and around to show the length of her jaw, the downturned head, gazing at the floor in front of me. I returned to the base of her spine and traced down and back just barely, curling under where here backside met its seat, following straight through to the small dip where the underside of her thighs slanted away from the platform’s edge, veering back at her knees, down the bend of her calf, under her heel, the arch of her foot, the tiny curl of her toes, back along her foot, up her shin, over her knee and following a slight curve all the way back to meet her stomach.

I left the head blank, an egg-shaped object ready to be filled in later, her hands and feet a scratchy splay of lines.

Sketching out the placement for the hair, the zone and weighted direction of each lock, took the rest of the session. I am very particular about hair. When it ended, she stood up without a word and went to retrieve her clothes from the rail by the door.

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She took the same spot in the same position seven days later. I don’t know how they do it. The Sudanese man was not here today, so there would be no cursory nod exchanged.

I watched her blink at the floorboards, just once, a languid movement of the eyes, and wondered if I should focus on outlining the facial features or begin shading today. I decided to keep focusing on the body. I always put faces off. I like to spend as long as possible learning a face before I draw it. It’s the one part that needs to be most alike.

Cleaning smudged graphite off the eraser, then picking up the light pencil, I scanned the lines of her body to proof-check the dimensions before it was too late to go back. I let the pencil track what I’d drawn last week as my eyes followed the outline of her body. When I came to the intersection between her stomach and thighs, I realised I’d drawn her stomach so that it sat too far back. I grabbed the eraser and hesitated, wondering whether it was worth fixing. The line of her stomach wasn’t convex, but it wasn’t sunken either. I decided to fix it. She was a replica model, so she wouldn’t mind.

I really do not know how they do it.

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Next week I had to erase a few more lines. Was it just me? Had my visual calculus faded since I last did a life study?

I had to redraw the line of her stomach for a second time. It seemed to have pushed out somewhat. The difference wasn’t too significant, but it was enough to show a tiny forwards curve that I was pulling my mental hairs out trying to recall being there the last few weeks.

As well as this, I’d begun the first stages of shading on her arms at the end of last the session. I’d blocked the darkest zones to match the soft impression of her small deltoid. I couldn’t decide if it was a difference in lighting from outside compared with last week, but the impression of her deltoid was not there today. Maybe she’d been tensing that one small muscle when I’d blocked that area of shadow.

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I barely ate all week. Things were getting bad. My eyes looked grey and I got head spins when I stood up, which I rarely did. A data-entry job requires movement of the fingers and arms at the best of times.

She was drinking from a take-away mug when she arrived. Leaving it by the rail and taking off her clothes, she got up onto the platform, sat, looked down to the side and waited. I stared at her for a very long while. Such a long time that I was wasting it. I looked at her body, then my outline, then back again. I’d noticed another mistake. The ridge of her hipbone was nowhere near as prominent as I’d implied in the outline. Squiggling the eraser into it, I reconnected the gap with a smoother line, then couldn’t help but feel annoyed. My outline of her waist looked wrong. I needed to move the line of her stomach out just a little more. I looked at her body again. There was another change. I had to move the curve of her stomach line a little further down so it was around navel-height.

As I erased the errors and redrew them, I thought back to a couple of weeks ago and was certain it had been a concave line, not a convex one. Was she gaining weight? Surely she couldn’t do it that quickly. Maybe she was beginning pregnancy. But as I would learn later, she’d apparently transitioned, so perhaps she was bloating.

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Next week she arrived a few moments earlier, finishing the last of a snack bar in her fingers, hanging her clothes up, and returning to her spot.

It was now that I seriously began to suspect she was gaining weight. I said nothing, not even to myself. I tried to look at the other artists and gauge the thoughts behind their eyes, but they were too far into their own visual worlds.

The outwards curve in her stomach line had shifted down again, and even looked more obvious, halfway illusory as to whether it was real or not. This was the fourth time I had to redraw it. And then I had to double-check my rendition of her chest. Unwanted self-doubt spun my judgement. What if I was just wanting this? Eventually I erased the underside of her breasts and redrew them a millimetre or two lower. It was only by seeing this change that I realised the line of her armpit looked too straight. Her upper arms, pressed against her sides as she leaned, were showing the tiniest of bulges forwards and backwards. Then I looked at the rest of her and nearly lost my mind as an entire web of mistakes came tumbling as if out of a bin to litter the page. The lines where her hip met underwear were too straight. I had to redraw them with a fractional dip. Then the underside of her thighs didn’t sink off the edge of her seat far enough. Minor mistakes, but I had always been hyper-attuned to small things.

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I had to darken her navel, next week, and give it a faint oval shape. I didn’t want to say anything. I could hardly say anything to myself about it. If I wasn’t going crazy, and these changes were going to repeat themselves, then not a single one of us artists would end up drawing anything accurate. Our drawings would distort by one increment after another – width in some places and not others, curves of irregular sizes all over her body until one part of her bent while the other cut straight. Part of me wanted to run with it for the sake of shaking things up and venturing into the realm of Picasso. After all, I’d found the whole idea of this realism exercise boring from the start. But I was not in control of my piece, right now. Nobody can draw a car accurately if it’s moving. And the most off-putting thing of all was that nobody else seemed to look confused. They were drawing with intensity and confidence.

I began to look for things to prove or deny what I thought was happening, but all I found was confirmation. Her skin was no longer tight against her. It had a relaxed characteristic, now, its edges soft. The impression of her bones had become blurred so as to be indistinguishable from anything else about her body. Her belly was a problem. The curve had shifted all its weight into the lower part of the outline, but this time I resolved to be stubborn. In retrospect it was foolish, a brief swing of my feeble fist in the dark at nothing. Either she’d eaten a meal beforehand, or something had happened since last week. Her belly was beginning to swell around her navel.

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