Painting A Nude: The Undressing

AdVersion

STUDENT REQUIRES PART TIME WORK
Anything legal and moral considered.
Only available during 'unsocial' hours and
occasional days. Reply Box No 662G

Box No 662G
I am an artist, painter mostly, require exceptional model
for clothed posing. Usual rate. Unsocial hours ideal.
Send age, M/F, recent photograph and phone number.
2B, Brunswick Centre, Brunswick Rd, London E15 4JJ

An artist, intensely focused, shy yet piercing eyes that blink, like an owls, slowly and deliberately as if posting colour, texture, shadow and shape to memory. Slightly dowdy in cloth, and quite possibly hygiene, hair lank, a certain pervading aroma; tardiness of appearance disguises an aggressive business manner, working time, a rate per hour, a work schedule, are negotiated and concluded without so much as a 'good evening'. The brisk manner may be shyness, or a flaw in social skills, an anxiety to commence, or just a game. The artist prowls like a caged animal.

A model, a student, nervous naturally, it is a first time posing, hesitant, groomed for approval, the grooming ignored, mildly confused, the preliminaries, you see, names neither offered, nor asked, or even spoken to, curious beyond wondrous, and stands, fidgeting.

And so to begin, with the customary awkwardness of strangers, a clipped dialogue, one straining to please, the other... just a strain, uncomfortable making demands.

"Keep still!"

A hand to chin, firm, commanding, like the dentist, twist turn, head raised - angle appraised shadowed by murmured grunts; the faint reek of oil paint and turpentine quite fails to mask a musky scent. Not wholly unpleasant.

"Hold the pose." Harsh.

Behind me, looking at what? Am I to be painted from behind? How will anyone know it's me?

Prowling again, three steps, stop, sigh; shift the shoulder alignment, looks from the side, looks from the front. Twist the chin a taut neck-stretching delineating fraction, and growls.

"Hold the pose." A request.

Now a camera, soft clicks, digital, of course. Angles, repeated, flash blinking, eyes blinking. "Don't look at me. Hold the pose." Now charcoal on paper, scratching, blowing, a different smell, cleaner somehow. Moving and drawing mumbling whispers, moving and drawing mild obscenities.

It's a mess, this place, splendid with clutter, paintings, paint a riot of colour heavy redolent tongue coating... silent.

"You don't say much."

A different glance, hair brushed from the forehead, charcoal smudged. I point with my eyes. Shrugs.

"I'm a painter."

It covers everything, but not the piquancy, and nothing.

Leaves me standing. Pulling canvases from racked shelving clearing with feet, debris, laying canvas, portraits, crowd scenes, members, costumed, coy nudes, risqué strangely hued copulations. Studies, hands, feet, eyes, and lips still glossed.

"Can I move?" Nod.

"Choose."

"What am I choosing?"

"You."

"You want me to choose a style?"

"Choose how I should paint you."

"You're the artist."

"You are the subject. Choose. You won't choose right, no one ever does."

"I don't understand the point."

"There is no "point". I will paint what you see, not what I see."

"You want me to select one of these paintings that I think represents me."

"No.

We are both wasting our time. You should go."

I shrug, near the door, a voice.

"Next Wednesday. Eight o'clock. Maybe. Less clothes."

- - - - -

ConVersion

The door is ajar, I did knock. The studio, a room, empty, and crowded. Partly cleared. A slightly raised dais. Cushioned, purple draped shiny, and around, paintings... possibly.

Possibly... photographs more like. Paintings by smell by touch by framing. Caressed not brush stroked, intimacy within oil, deep drawn plunging conscious depth. Colour sublime, clear, the painters eyes hauled to canvas, shades unnoticed, virulent hues rendered clean, unsullied, now seen, now fingertip touched, now traced.

I am here, centred. I am singly clad, my face, my clothes, my hands, my lips, my body, my hair, all cloned, the once. To my left side, a flaccid penis thicker than my leg, dusky pink, partly sheathed, purpled head intruding beyond, rippled skin sleeping. To my right side, a shaven pubis, viewed like the soft hill of the English countryside painted twice the size of my head, split, smooth shadow trailing, curving beneath, tissue nub crinkled darker skinned breaks shadows line. I crouch. Move left. The same penis, a woman's? lips as last I was here. Lipstick pink, glistening, pouting kisses. Move right, a lower view, legs slightly parted, crevice snagged creamy skin, a protruding crenulated russet nub, a beauty spot, a blemish on otherwise perfect skin dark spilling into folds of blackness.

I'm made to move, a symmetry unfolding left and right, separate acts, detached intent, mutually independent, intrinsically joined. Lipstick pink parted on purpled hue, moistened, growing. A male finger (definitely) indents female flesh, parting, and still hidden. Pink lips engulfing, erect, dark vein ridged, drawn inward on hollowed cheek. A glistening finger, the dazzling transparency of wetness, penetrating, half entered, half withdrawn, a moisture click painted to see heard crystal clear in silence. Erect, shadow cast on muscled abdomen, wet, saliva trailed ruddy engorged, ringed with vestige trace of lips pink bloom. Now almost joined, arched to receive, parted to give, strained to pour, electric. The last painting, set opposing my singularity, a climax, unmistakable, the canvas screams, fingers claw, fully penetrated leaking pearl gelled on ruby red flesh, opened, exposed to see, to smell to hear... and intimate within, and within. I'm uncomfortably with uncanvassed honesty, an unwilling voyeur feasting unsated, aroused by desire, curiosity abandoned to selfish pleasure.

"Have you decided?"

I jump, heard no footfall should have noticed the piquancy.

"I'm to choose. From these?"

"Maybe."

"How did you paint me? When?"

"You're easy to paint. It's a surface. It's not you. Clothes and a head. Empty."

"And these?"

"People." Shrug.

"They are just paintings of sex. Incremental steps to a... fuck. That's not people."

"Were you there? How would you know? Do you know painting?"

"A little. Your style is astonishing."

"Style is a technique. Image is painting."

"Are you in these paintings?"

"You think them of me, that this work is about sexual arousal? Maybe I should have left you a pornographic magazine, and saved my money."

"I don't know what to think."

"I can't paint you clothed. You're too innocent, you lack the charisma of experience."

"The advertisement said clothed."

"And still you spend one hour of my time, of my money, studying my most intimate paintings."

"You were not here."

"You looked where you wanted to look. Saw what you wanted to see. You chose last time. From a dozen paintings, you chose to look at my sex. Your innocence is all I can paint."

"Why did you paint me clothed?"

"Look at the painting. It has no soul. It conveys nothing, it tells no more than the photograph from which it was painted."

"And naked you will see me different." Sigh.

"It is not what I see, I can make of you anything I chose, I can paint you in high office, I can paint you with dignity, or sadness, or laughter. I can paint you as a gymnast and give musculature you scarcely possess. It is not about my choice, not about what I want to see. Naked you will see you different."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Must I answer?"

"Why are the canvases so big, why exaggerating the size."

Resigned sigh, a few steps, fingers combing still lank hair. I'm the child.

"Why are you playing for time? You must undress. I need to see you."

"It is a serious question. If you talk, I will... undress. For you."

"I'm uncomfortable with words, the chaotic scramble of letters, I'm a servant to words, not their master. I do not like to speak. I cannot paint with words. Must I tell you this? Can I not simply paint your naivety?

"Each of these canvases is one fifteenth part of a whole. Fifteen canvases make a single portrait, the entire body, not just these details. Put your clothes on the chair. What you see in the single canvas is passion and desire, a very private act given between equals, an act they share, but rarely see, not as we see it. Theirs is an unbridled passion, uncontrollable, unstoppable, driven sometimes by love, sometimes by lust, and always by the giving and receiving of pleasure. In exaggerating the size, the act is removed from conventional observation; it is no longer a copulation of a type that may be viewed on the Internet or in a magazine. The viewer passes from adolescent voyeurism to seeing beyond the image as a purely a sexual act. Detail is revealed. Will you turn around slowly for me, arms down by your side? Detail the viewer could only expect to know of someone they share intimacy with, the myriad colours of her sex, the beauty spot that spills into the fold of her labia, his penis, the foreskin that never quite closes over a protruding head, the change of colour, engorged with his blood quickened in mutual desire. Her lipstick, chosen to mark and not solely for lips decoration. Their secretions, different maybe from yours or mine in their texture, their colour and consistency, the taste of their sex, the smells of their bodies, and their pleasure, only partly glimpsed in these canvases, is unmistakable in the whole.

"Put your hands above your head, like a dancer, turn slowly. You become intimate with their intimacy, you share their act in your memory with those you have shared intimacy with. The images may arouse, as they clearly arouse you, and it was unfair of me, perhaps, to only show you the sexual core of the whole. Beyond arousal is delight at the pleasure of others, pleasure at memories recalled, pleasure in the secret held rediscovery of your own intimacy, and pleasure in anticipation of intimacy to come. Will you lie on the dais now please? I'm going to photograph you, don't be alarmed, the photographs will be deleted when the painting is finished. The photographs are simply a tool, a notebook of colour and texture. I paint in the style of photographs to hold true to the reality I see. Close to the canvas, you will see a different reality and smooth skin becomes a foreign terrain, the colour is not the lie you imagine in your head, the smooth surface is a minefield of pores and follicles and blemishes. We imagine what we want to see, and rarely see what we imagine.

- - - - -

DiVersion

Some of these photographs will be very close, very personal... click... you may do what you will... click... to express your inner self. I told you these paintings... click... have been selected to arouse you... click... I want you to be aroused... click... I want to paint you inflamed... click... your passion, touching yourself... click... imagining whom ever you will... click... opening yourself to your emotions... click... with desire, I will help you if you wish... click... you only have to ask... click... Talk to me... click... Tell me what you are thinking... click... show me what it is you need... click... I will paint the real you from... click... these photographs. From what... click... you reveal of your emotion... click... and your desire. Talk to me now... click... What are you thinking?

Click...

Click...

"I'm confused, I feel vulnerable... click... I'm not sure what it is... click... you want from me... click... what you expect from me... click... I'm nervous... click... embarrassed... click... you're very very close... click... "

"I'm going to be closer... click... I need to photograph your face... click... What are you feeling... click...? Tell me what you see... click... Tell me what you smell... what you feel... click... tell me what you hear... click..."

"The edge of your painters smock... click... Your knees are dirty... click... from the floor... click... My face, I can see my face reflected... click... in the camera lens... click... I smell the room... click... Oils, turps, varnish... click... and a musky tang, erotic and yet... click..."

"Close your eyes... click... I'm going to use the flash. It's Petuli. What do you feel... click... reach out and touch... click... me... click... "

"Oh my... skin... click... is it... it's your leg, quivering, warm. Don't move... click... don't... are straddling me? click... "

"Open... your eyes... click... tell me what you see."

"I... oh my.... I see... I can see... it's... click... You know what I can see."

"Yes... click...

"describe, touch, smell, ... click... "

"Intoxicating... my eyes are drunk at the sight of you. My senses are reeling... your scent is ripe, like an exotic fruit bruised at my lips, the sensation before taste when tongue buds strive to bursting point, and the mouth wells with saliva. If you were a fruit, I would pluck and bring you into my mouth."

"Wait... it may come to that. Savour first, eyes and fingers... describe for my painters eyes what is you see, colour, texture, what it is you touch."

"It's... the same but different from the canvas... shaved of course and quite unexpectedly rounded, delicately cleaved, a silken hollow deeper than I imagined. And a glistening folded nub... a rosette gleaming... hot... God you're so hot... your heat stings my face, and smooth, how can you be this smooth... and you're trembling where my finger strokes. Oh yes... come closer. I can see the beauty spot, chestnut brown, slightly raised, I'm following with my finger where it slips into the folds of your lips. Heavens, you're wet... seeping. You move when I touch you there, shrink and ease back against my knuckle, and between the secretion glued lips of your sex, you smell of secrets, hidden treasure, of musk and sandalwood boxes, the edges are darker, crenulated... "

"Darker is not a colour, just shade."

"Then maroon and mahogany, on the very edge, like make-up painted to highlight, where the world ends, and where fancy begins, and lower down, the skin becomes drawn, turning inward, almost plaited, to a hood, here, where you flinch at my touch, and the glut of your desire pools under the tip of my finger and spills, a rivulet trickling. The inner surface, salmon pink and magenta, violent colours before the storm slick smooth lined, coated clear...strung with pearls and you move to fold my finger within you, closer still. I can run my tongue through your flesh, and I feel the burn where you mark me as yours with your shiny pink lipstick."

"You may stop... if you wish.

Oooh."

Authors Note - I've only ever been photographed nude, for an artist, and I've had my penis cast in wax. If I was going to be painted, I'd liked to be coaxed just as described above. If I've intrigued you, interested you, amused, annoyed or excited you, please vote and send feedback. Copyright 'Neonlyte' 05/2006