★★★TOP 5 WATTPAD ROMANCE NOVEL (reached #5)!★★★ When Sera's new art teacher mistakes her for a model and demands that she strip naked, sparks start to fly.
Will Mr Marek be able to keep his student at arm's length after seeing everything she has t...
[RECAP: Sera has thrown all her efforts into her art while she suffers the separation from Mr Marek...]
Jasper's reaction to her A-level artwork project, a portrait of him and Barry in the oils that Tarq had given her, moved Sera more than anything. The theme had been "love" and she had chosen to do a painting of the couple, now celebrating forty years together.
Barry had given her a lot of help and advice with the oils, though she hadn't let him see the final portrait. "Don't overwork them," he had advised her. "Trust the colours."
She had done, and it had worked.
There were tears in Jasper's eyes when Sera finally unveiled it to the evening class.
"When I was a very small boy my godfather took me to the theatre for a birthday treat. We had marvellous seats, at the very front row of the dress circle. When they opened the curtains - I can remember the thick, red velvet as it parted to reveal all the brightness and colour inside - I felt that they were opening a huge birthday present just for me. Bright and glittering, with these marvellous scenes within. Throughout the entire show, I thought the actors were performing solely for me. It was only when it finished and the whole audience applauded that I realised it was for other people as well."
He turned to Sera. "This is how your painting make me feel. As though I am the only person in the world seeing it. As though the world, for a moment, has stopped just for me."
His voice was gruffer on these last words, losing its usual silken theatrical smoothness.
By some trick of the light and the way Sera had painted it, you could see the beauty of the two young men they had once been. The underlying bone structure seemed stronger than the lines and marks of age and time giving character to the older faces above it.
Their personalities were there: the painting revealed more than a mirror. Jasper's face displayed its wit, mischief and charm, but there was a vulnerability in his eyes. Barry, whose features were softer, his eyes a gentler pale blue, showed a quiet strength. It was an honest portrait yet also a compassionate one.
"It's just absolutely exquisite," Elizabeth said. "You've more than captured them. It's more real than either of you," she said, looking to Jasper and Barry.
"It's... just right," Barry said slowly. This was all he said, but Sera could see that he was deeply moved and it moved her as well.
They all stood in silence for a few moments, each thinking their own thoughts.
Mr Marek came up behind them. "The struggle you now face," he told Sera, "is losing confidence that you will ever paint anything like this again. But I can assure you that you will."
"Is it good then?" Sera asked. "Do you like it?"
Mr Marek considered the painting for a few more moments and returned his gaze to Sera. "It's a masterpiece," he said simply. Then he smiled at her, one of his rare, kind smiles that momentarily made her feel that he saw her as an equal, as a fellow artist.
Sera felt dizzy. She took a deep breath.
"There are things that in five or ten years you may do differently. Small changes to your technique, the use of the palette knife. But while these may make it more perfect in a technical sense, the absence of them doesn't reduce the impact of your work," Mr Marek told her.
It was more than he had said directly to her in weeks. When would this ordeal be over?
Joel had also done brilliantly. He had created a kind of tableau with a painted backdrop of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Four art figurines clad in exquisitely designed miniature costumes were posed in front of it: Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel.
Lois had produced a pop-art work in the style of Andy Warhol. Instead of cans of beans she had painted Joel's Christmas gift, in nine different squares like Warhol's Monroe.
It sparked some outrage at St Christopher's. "It's self-love, isn't it?" Lois had defended her work. Fortunately Mr Marek took a more progressive view than Mr Billings would have done and didn't try to prevent her from entering it.
Lois caused further outrage by acting as a living canvas for Janette's project. She wore a flesh coloured bikini and Janette covered her in bright, rainbow body paints, photographing the result. Mr Marek had managed to verify with the Exam Board that a painted human would qualify.
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