Drawn Out Dreams. [A Zarry Fanfiction.]

Chapter Twelve

“So, your final exam work theme is ‘Imagination’. We’re pretty lucky this term, since ‘imagination’ could cover so much, so you should all come up with amazing ideas. For the rest of this double lesson, I want you to start making a thought shower and a collage of what ideas you could come up with for your own work on ‘imagination’.” Mrs Martins, the art teacher at the sixth form started to explain to the year twelve group, as they all sat around in double art on the following Thursday afternoon.

The windows and doors were all fully opened in the medium sized art room. The hot sun was pouring its golden rays into the room, filling it with stuffy heat that some of the other students found rather unbearable. The English sun had decided to make yet another appearance on that particular May afternoon. In a week it would be June, and that’s when the weather would really start getting hotter, this was almost like the sun, showing everyone what they were all going to be in for this summer.

The large pieces of finished and unfinished art that were stuck all around the room only seemed to make the room seem more smaller and stuffier. The cupboards around the room had racks and racks of materials like unopened paints, or pots of paintbrushes that were dying to be used. A huge cupboard dominated one end of the room, and it was full of bulging black sketchbooks, some that were owned by current students, while others that had been lying in the cupboard for years, their owners having left the sixth form years ago.

In the centre of the room was the long table, big enough and wide enough to fit the average six or seven students around it. The other few boys that were taking art were at one side of the table. A few were now working, mumbling ideas to one another. Others sat stretched back in their chairs, not really wanting to work in such heat conditions that had caused them to loosen up their school ties.

Zayn Malik was sat at the other end of the table. One of the big windows of the art room was directly facing him, and every so often a soft, yet cool breeze would blow onto him, cooling down his tanned skin as it blew over it. His chocolate brown eyes looked through his glasses and towards the large windows. The hooks that the window was hung on were old, and metal, and he observed how they tended to give off a quiet squeak everytime the breeze was strong enough to move the actual window. There were piles of books and paperwork which were laid right underneath the window, and everytime the breeze seemed to roll over them, it would ruffle over the papers, and Zayn couldn’t help but smile at the quiet shuffling noises that it produced.

The voices of the other students that were talking about possible ideas suddenly brought Zayn’s eyeline back down onto the two blank pages of his A3 sketchbook. Zayn’s sketchbook was just like his drawing book, but larger, and with more educated pieces of writing around his artwork, as well as his artwork being carried out along a particular theme. His school sketchbook was filled with page after page of artwork or all materials. Some pages even had the same still life drawings over and over again, but with lots of different materials, like oil pastels, or crayons. Zayn loved to make his sketchbook work as tactile as possible. He loved nothing more than washing his hands at the end of a lesson, and watching all the colourful paint marks slip from his fingertips and into the sink in a large swirl, that was almost like a water-based firework.

But, for once, Zayn’s mind was blank to any such colourful ideas that he could pair with imagination. Normally, Zayn’s imagination ruled over his life, whether he knew this or not, as most of the time it was extremely subconscious, but his mind felt like a blank slate. He chewed on his bottom lip, as his hands carefully turned the pencil that was inbetween his fingers. His drawing pencils meant everything to him, especially due to the fact that his Nana had brought him them for Christmas years ago, and he had looked after them and kept them in such a good condition ever since then. He kept them in size order, and made sure each one was sharpened well.