A New Season

I couldn't finish it.

The teacher had kept me (and a few others) behind due to our 'inadequate work'. The brief she had given us was simple: to present a piece of landscape art, reflective of a season and your personality.

I loved briefs like this. I had the freedom to depict nature from my own perspective and the ability to encompass a wide variety of bold colours to portray my ideas. Usually, I got the highest marks for assignments associated with landscape art, so it was a surprise to me —and my teacher— to see an unfinished painting.

I sighed and picked up my wooden paint palette again whilst staring at the canvas in front of me. On the bright side, it wasn't completely blank. The painting was reflective of a season, just not of my personality. 

Ignoring the empty white patches, a range of warm autumnal hues filled the rectangular frame and streaks of darker brown represented trees, rooted in the distance. Chestnut splotches of paint symbolised the dying leaves and a mocha-coloured winding path echoed the softer tones of the painting. The concept behind my artwork was to mirror the image of a forest during autumn. It was too bad I couldn't put the blank spaces down to stylistic licence. Unfortunately, my painting was obviously incomplete.

When my teacher asked if a distraction was affecting my work or if I was bothered by something, I quickly convinced her otherwise and blamed my lack of work on my lack of sleep. I refused to accept that I could be distracted or bothered by something. I was a hard-working, focused student, who took pride in her work. Others had described me as an overachiever, so I proudly adopted that label. I had always believed in striving to do everything to the best of my ability.

Though, a part of me knew that I was lying to myself. Deep down, I knew that my teacher was right, I was distracted by something. In fact, I was distracted by someone. A true hard-working overachiever wouldn't be distracted or bothered by anything, so I was a fake, a fraud. A true hard worker wouldn't be distracted by one of their classmates. Especially not by a new girl in their art class.

I was reluctant to accept that I was distracted by a girl because I couldn't understand why I would be distracted by a girl. I had only dated and liked guys. Except for the odd female celebrity crush.

Her name was Amber, she had transferred to my class four weeks ago, which also happened to be the day when we got the new brief. 

I remembered the first time I saw her. As soon as she entered the room, I felt a shift in the ambience of the class. When she introduced herself, she smiled which made her face shine like a gem in the room. My attention was drawn to her dimples and her warm, caramel eyes, which complimented her dark tanned skin; layers of voluminous corkscrew honey curls adorned her heart-shaped face and her full pink lips rested in a perfect pout. Describing her as attractive, was an understatement. Amber was beyond stunning and her presence was captivating. I remembered having to make a conscious effort to look away from her, so she didn't think I was staring at her like a creep.

At first, I thought my attraction to her was solely based on her appearance, but then I found myself getting in situations purely just to talk to her and spend time with her. It had started with asking her if she knew where her next class was and showing her how to get there and then, somehow, we ended up as sort of friends.

Over the past week, I had decided to stop talking to Amber to prevent my attraction from developing before I fully understood it, but it was making things worse.

I hadn't painted anything new during the week.

It didn't help that I had inadvertently based my painting on her and not myself. Everything about her reminded me of autumn, her name, her appearance her warm personality... She was my inspiration.