The drawing skills of a 29 year old. Standing far apart, tense bent arms, what on earth would Freud say? Nevermind the fact that asked to draw both sexes, they appeared on the page firmly covered up with clothes. Perhaps that’s just the result of living in Egypt throughout most of my twenties.

Feeling a little artsy I enrolled for some drawing classes recently. I was pretty confident of my abilities as far as not being able to draw goes. I mean, I can’t draw, I really can’t, but I can draw better than most people who can’t draw. That was what my ego told myself.

Class number one. There are two students. One of them is me. I already know and like the teacher’s work, so good start there. I’d been out shopping to try to find the 2B pencil required, without much success, so, in my hand-made-at-school-but-still-pretty-cool leather pencil case I arrived armed with lots of other pencils. You know, in the hope that 11 HBs would not make up for not having one 2B.

We had a brief introduction to the course. It sounded so exciting and the voice in my head was rather self-congratulatory about finally getting around to taking a drawing class. Talking done, we were told to draw a man and a woman.

Umm.

At this point I realised that I’m a pretty-good-not-very-good drawer – of anything but people. Somehow I learned to draw people as a kid, progressed until I hit about eight and then, despite hours of art classes for years, I couldn’t get past that.

“What do you mean ‘a man and a woman’? I mean, standing, sitting, long hair, short hair? What do you meeeeeeeeeeean?” I screamed inside my head.

I could already hear my classmate’s deft pencil strokes cutting through the silence.

Looking back at my empty page, I decided to join the pencil stroke ensemble. Let it be noted that I did not go for the stick men version, although the thought did cross my mind. But come on, I didn’t want to appear totally stupid on my first day in class.

I couldn’t decide what to do. Straight arms, bent arms. How close together should the man and woman be? Should the woman be in heels? How big should her hips be? How big should her breasts be? Should I bother to denote her breasts? Is there time for this? Just do the quickest thing possible. A skirt, yes, an A-line skirt, long hair and delicate shoulders for her. Squarish shoulders and torso for him, with trousers.

Finished, finally, I looked down at my valiant effort. “Not too bad really, for a first attempt – considering they’re people.” I thought.

Then I glanced at my classmate’s.

She’d only managed to sketch a man and woman reminiscent of Matisse’s Blue Nude in a standing position.

Tonight is class number three. Luckily there is a big glass of wine waiting for me after! Still, I can only get better, right?