Take on Me

1

¤ Crystals
Of Monsters and Men ↲

I know I'll wither so peel away the bark
'Cause nothing grows when it is dark
In spite of all my fears, I can see it all so clear
I see it all so clear

▪︎ ▪︎ ▪︎

The naked man on the dais was not shy with his poses.

His current positioning left nothing to the imagination, especially since Kim Taehyung had the unfortunate luck of facing the man head on.

Taehyung liked to consider this art class - Illustration of the Human Form - a game of chance. Or a game of roulette, perhaps. Around the elevated dais was a circle of workstations, where each artist would find an easel and a relatively uncomfortable chair. There were no assigned seats, so each student would choose a workstation at random. The whole luck part had nothing to do with the seats, however.

It all came down to the model and where he or she chose to position their bodies.

"This pose will last for thirty minutes," Professor Yang announced loftily to the class, settling down into a worn desk in the corner. "Use this time to draw each and every detail - the curves and definition, the shadows from the light."

Taehyung internally groaned. Thirty minutes of drawing a guy who had his legs spread open before him.

Great.

In his opinion, the front of a person was the worst angle to draw. It was awkward, knowing the model was watching as his or her body was recreated in charcoal on canvas. And then there was the whole staring at someone's gentials thing, but Taehyung didn't focus on that aspect. The front of a person, in general, just didn't artistically interest him.

The side was the best angle to Taehyung, who was fascinated in capturing the twist of bodies when they struck involved poses. The back of the model wasn't so bad either; the spine was a unique challenge to properly depict and asses were quite fun to draw. But today, Taehyung was particularly unlucky as the model decided to face him directly and bare all for him to see.

Taehyung picked up his drawing materials and got to work, easily pushing his distaste for the man's pose out of his mind. Peering above his easel, he took a moment to study the way the man's body created shadows on the ground. Elongated and dark, the shadows created a much more fascinating subject than the man himself. However, this class entailed drawing bodies and not abstract images.

"Can you bend one of your legs?" A student to his right asked, having the advantageous and enviable side angle.

The model adjusted and this new pose thankfully gave Taehyung a little bit more to work with. He started sketching an outline, looking up every few seconds to get the lines right.

One thing that was completely unprofessional but very amusing to Taehyung was to create stories for the models who came to the class. He never understood the desire to strip down and have thirty students draw your every imperfection, but to each their own. So to make the silent room - which was only occasionally punctuated by music - a little more fun, Taehyung built intricate lives for the models in his head.

He liked to think he was quite good at it. Inventing elaborate tales was something he relied on since childhood.

Today's model was a middle-aged man with a beer belly and some of the most unwieldy eyebrows ever seen. His skin was relatively unmarked outside of the sprinkling of hair in all the usual places. The expression he wore was peaceful, almost like laying naked in front of strangers was his escape.