Devon Hartford - Painless

A few minutes later, a middle aged woman walked into the room. She had curly hair and a big smile. She wore a wide brimmed hat and a khaki hunter’s vest with a bunch of pockets over a long sleeve shirt and jeans. Hiking boots completed her outfit. Were we going on a safari?

“Hello, everybody,” she said. “My name is Katherine Weatherspoon, and I’ll be your Plein Air instructor for spring term. If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re going to be painting outdoors for the next ten weeks. En plein air,” she said it with an accent that sounded like she was saying ‘on plain air’, “is a French expression that means ‘in the open air’. Everyone, gather up your easels. We’re heading out.”

The students picked up their easels and followed Katherine Weatherspoon out the door.

I leaned over to Kamiko and whispered, “I was right, we’re going to be painting the blue sky all quarter.”

“It’s worse than that,” Kamiko whispered, “we’re actually going to be painting air, like oxygen. So it’s just clear. Did you remember to bring a tube of transparent acrylic glaze? Because that’s the only color you’re going to need.”

“What, like see through? We’re just going to put clear paint on canvases?”

Kamiko shrugged her shoulders.

This was going to be really boring. I guess not every aspect of painting was a winner. “Where are we going?” I asked Kamiko as we filed in behind the last of the students.

“I have no idea,” she said.

We walked across campus, through Adams College, and out to North Torrey Pines boulevard. We crossed at the light when it was green.

“Are we going to the cliffs?” I asked.

“I guess,” Kamiko said.

Sure enough, we ended up out at the cliffs west of the SDU campus. They overlooked the beach and the Pacific Ocean. There was lots of plain air for the painting. Yay.

“Here will be good,” Professor Weatherspoon said, setting her portable easel down. “Everyone, find a place to set your easels up, then I’ll begin a demonstration.”

Kamiko and I found a spot together. It didn’t really matter where I set up because there was oxygen in every direction.

A few minutes later, the professor had us all gather around her easel. She had a very small canvas mounted on it, about four by six inches. With her portable palette already covered with little dollops of oil, she began painting. She used a little metal spatula, which she kept referring to as a palette knife, to mix colors on her palette and smear them onto the canvas. It didn’t take long for her to cover the canvas with colors. I realized half way through that she was painting the curve of the Torrey Pines cliffs to the south, the beach, the ocean, and the sky. Her painting was really amazing, resembling a sloppy photograph made of cake frosting. If I squinted my eyes, it looked like the real thing.

When the professor was finished, she turned to the students and smiled, “Now go ahead and start your paintings. I’ll be walking around helping everyone out.”

Kamiko and I walked over to our easels. Now that I realized we weren’t going to be painting invisible oxygen all term, I adjusted my easel so I was facing the south cliffs, like the professor had.

I didn’t have a palette knife, so I just used brushes. I wasn’t used to working on such a complicated subject likes cliffs and waves. There were ten million different things to paint in my field of vision. I was getting a little flustered. I set my brush down and rubbed my forehead with the back of my wrist.

“Having troubles?” Professor Weatherspoon asked.

I was so used to Marjorie Bitchinger’s bitchiness and sarcasm last quarter, I was afraid to say anything for fear of incurring Professor Weatherspoon’s wrath.

“It’s okay,” she said in a kind voice, “there’s a lot to figure out all at once,” she smiled. “What you want to do is focus on the big shapes first. Work from big to small and add detail last. May I?” she asked, reaching for my brush.

“Yeah, totally,” I smiled.

She picked up my brush, dabbed it in some raw umber on my palette, and blocked in a few lines for the cliffs. “Since you’re using a brush, paint thin. You don’t want too much paint making a mess all over your canvas.” She rinsed the brush in my little jar of Turpenoid, then went in with a thin mix of white and ultramarine blue. “Put in the horizon line, like this,” she painted a faint blue horizontal line, “so you know where it is.” She cleaned the brush again, dipped it in some yellow ochre, and scribbled in the line of the beach where it met the water. My painting now looked like colored outlines of the view. “Now all you have to do is fill everything in,” she smiled and handed me my brush before walking away to help other students.

My good mood was back. I turned to Kamiko, “Is this even a real class? It seems like way too much fun.”

“I know, right?” she grinned while she mixed a pile of phthalo green with cerulean blue on her palette.

“Maybe we can both drop out of school and be Plein Air painters for the rest of our lives.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” she grinned as she applied her blue green paint to her canvas where the greenish waves met the golden sand of the beach. “We can hitchhike across America and paint whatever we see.”

“Then we can publish a book of our paintings,” I suggested.

“Totally,” Kamiko grinned.

Plein Air Painting was awesome. When class was over three hours later, we packed everything up and walked back to SDU.

I had totally forgotten about my financial woes the entire time. And for that, I was grateful.

But they hadn’t forgotten about me.

Five people stood in front of me in line for the teller at the bank in Del Mar when I walked in the next morning.

From what I understood, if you handed a note to the bank teller that you had a gun and wanted money, they gave it to you. They didn’t ask if you had a gun. They just assumed you did, and paid you, which meant I was in luck because I had no gun. I’d considered stopping at a 99 Cents Only store to buy a toy gun, but I didn’t have 99 cents to spare, so I decided to wing it.

Of course, when you handed the note to the teller, they also stepped on the floor alarm button and the cops showed up, but I was fast on my feet. I could be gone before the SWAT team arrived and guns started going off.

Besides, this was San Diego. Did they even have SWAT teams in San Diego? The security guard at this bank was an old guy. I’m pretty sure he had a banana in his holster. I would be fine.

And I was only going to ask for $10,000 to cover my tuition. Not a penny more. I liked to think of it like a scholarship, because no one expected you to pay scholarships back.

The person in front of me was a bulbous man in a sloppy windbreaker and saggy slacks. He kept clearing his throat every five seconds. I think he had a hairball. I was waiting for him to squat down on the marble floor, head hanging between his shoulder blades, and hack it up like a cat, but he never did. He just kept hacking.

Eventually, the teller called Hairball up to the counter. He pulled out a stack of cash, which he counted out in front of the teller, coughing after every fifth bill he laid down like clockwork. I think he was making a cash deposit. I didn’t understand why he was counting it. That was the bank’s job. But he insisted. It took forever. He was hacking so often, I was getting the urge to clear my own throat. Were there toxic spores in the air? Whatever Hairball had, it was catching.

I was getting more and more nervous by the second because I was next. For a minute, I considered leaving, but didn’t. I had to go through with this. As soon as Hairball was gone, I was asking for that ten grand.