I had only a dim idea of what I was getting into when I started my first college art class.
It was an intro-level charcoal drawing class, required for all art majors and a prerequisite for every other two-dimensional art course. I expected to spend long hours in the studio, drawing large-scale still lives, and building my portfolio with challenging pieces.
But for the first couple weeks, we drew apples.
Many of the drawings were contour, which meant I needed to follow the apple’s curves on paper without looking at what my hand was doing. I learned two things: every apple is distinctly different from the other, and one cannot assume anything about something even as simple as an apple. All apples were not evenly curvy. Some had odd lumps on one side so they fell over when stood on the narrower base. Other apples were surprisingly round (those were particularly frustrating, because they turned out looking like plums). Some apples were boxy, and some had dents in them and appeared concave at certain angles. All of them had bruises, dents, misshapen forms, had lost their stems, or were otherwise something other than our idea of a “perfect apple.”
Gradually I stopped seeing them as apples. Everything in my line of sight was a part of the drawing: the background, the negative space, the imperfections. I was not drawing an apple anymore, but a world. Every object in the composition was connected, whether it was to show depth, contrast, or structure. The stool beneath the apple and the shadows surrounding it were just as important as the apple itself.
Just as I finally began feeling comfortable working with charcoal, we added a new element to our class: nude figure drawings. I anticipated a plethora of uncomfortable giggles and faces flushed with embarrassment. We as a society have been taught since childhood to avert our eyes from nudity; that butts are for crude humor; that we should cover our bodies; that people who reveal more skin than their peers are promiscuous. In thirty seconds every single one of those conventions was smashed into irreparable pieces and fell among the charcoal dust on the floor as the model removed her robe and assumed a pose.
It was then that I realized our bodies are no different than apples. My connection with the model was no more or less intimate than the one I had with the many apples I had drawn. I attempted to capture every line and shape my eyes could take in, trying to recreate the feeling of peaceful human existence on paper. Not once did I feel embarrassed for spending two and a half hours staring at nudity. I learned to simply admire the human body for its many complex forms, its corks that we call "imperfections," and for our numerous differences and similarities to each other. Regardless of gender, shape, size, color, hair, or proportions, our bodies are all the same. There is nothing inherently sexual or shameful about them. Bodies are nothing more than matter that occupies space in this world, exactly the way they should be.
