She was relatively happy, regardless, but had increasingly begun to feel the loneliness of her life. She had been married briefly to another artist, much to her father’s angst, but it had not played out well so she was not anxious to jump back into that skin again. But something was missing, something was not right. She felt as if she were late for an important appointment and her disquiet grew.
She wasn’t going to think about that now, though. She had a commission which would relieve a good deal of financial stress and she was hoping that would quiet her yearning – even if it were due to some silly Highland warrior.
Nothing provoked Casper’s over-zealous barking like a doorbell chime. It was the alarm that roused all of his basest instincts. A doorbell chime indicated immediate danger, possible murder, and if he was lucky, a squirrel. Barking and howling as if the lives of all those in the surrounding neighborhood were in imminent danger Casper jumped at the door, feverish to charge someone. Something. Anything.
“Shut the hell up, dog! You are a nut job,” Stella grabbed Casper by his collar and pulled him away from the door. She opened it just enough to look outside and was shaken to the core to see who was standing there.
Stella was in the business of beauty and fantasy but outside her door stood a man right off the cover of a romance book. He was so breathtakingly, beautifully perfect she thought he might actually be computer generated. Nobody was that beautiful. Or perfect. But there he was standing outside her door smiling at her, his midnight black hair blow dried in a tousled, sexy, but manly style.
“Uh, um, hello, can I help you?” Stella stuttered. Casper started to bark again, but she grabbed his collar tighter and pressed the dog in between her legs, capturing his head between her knees. Casper struggled to get loose but she squeezed tighter. He relented and made do with smelling rather than barking. The murderer on the other side of the door smelled like lemon grass, a sure sign of evil.
“Hi, I’m Shawn Craig. The Meade agency sent me. I’m your model.” Shawn’s smile was noteworthy in that it, too, was perfect. Model perfect teeth. The teeth of classic toothpaste commercial perfection. Stella, always sensitive to bone structure in models, noted that his museum quality cheekbones, chin and arched brows were the classic golden ratio. He was one of the few really perfect faces that Stella had ever seen. She wished she had a ruler to measure the proportions of his features because she knew this face would work out to be the cosmically transcendent archetype. He was The Mold, the beginning, the ultimate male beauty, all others being blurry, thrown together imitations. In his case, Beauty was NOT in the eye of the beholder, but it was flesh. Undeniably gorgeous flesh.
“Oh yeah, the model,” she said. “Shawn, I have a killer dog here. Please go through the side door, that’s where my studio is. It’s open. I’ll be there in just a minute.”
“Sure, be glad to,” he said, flashing her another toothy, perfect smile and with a nod he turned from the door and walked to the side of her house.
Stella closed the door and dragged Casper to the dining room. She opened the back door and shouted, “Squirrel! Go get that squirrel, Casper!” Like a cannon shot Casper flew out the back door looking for his beloved enemy.
“You crazy-ass dog.” Smirking at her deception Stella quickly closed the door and walked down the hall to her studio.
Her studio was a converted garage to which she had added lighting and windows so that it suited her needs. She had spent countless hours and dollars modifying the space until it was transformed into an enviable studio. The air quality and temperature were exact to keep her oils from drying too fast or too slow, there was very little dust and if she didn’t have enough natural light from the large windows then she had a bank of lights that imitated natural light very closely. It was a wonderful space and she loved being there. It was, quite literally, where the magic happened.
She walked into her studio and Shawn was there, his back to her, taking off his shirt. He had on a blue and green kilt and there was a rather large sword lying on the floor next to his duffel bag. It was not a toy, but looked heavy and dangerous, made of polished steel, something you might expect to see at the Renaissance Faire. ‘Who carried a sword on a modeling gig?’ she asked herself.
His back was to her but she knew without looking that his chest and arms would be ‘chiseled’. She knew that he had a body that he spent hours defining and maximizing so that every inch of his gorgeous self would reek with perfection. She knew it even before he turned from the window and smiled at her. Tanned and chiseled and, not surprisingly, his chest shaved clean as a baby’s behind, marble smooth and glossy. He was godlike in his masculine perfection, the ultimate male, the yang to the ultimate female yin.
She watched Shawn’s movement, the sway of his kilt, the muscled calves covered in thick white socks, and felt there was something undeniably sexy about a man in a kilt. Not that all skirted males were sexy, she mused. The Greek fustanella looked like a tutu and the Pacific Islanders lavalava looked like a bath towel, but the Scottish kilt was a garment that titillated her and she had no idea why. Maybe it was the reputation of the men that wore them. During battle the Highlanders had often been called the ‘Ladies from Hell’ because of their fierceness as warriors. Yet there was a vulnerability about them, too, and whenever Stella saw a man in one she wanted to slide her hand up his kilt and touch the naked warrior.
Shawn reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a bottle of baby oil. “I can oil my chest if you’d like,” he smiled knowing that his oiled chest was the pinnacle of his appeal.
“No, that won’t be necessary, Shawn,” she said. “I’m going to spend a couple hours doing some preliminary sketches and once I decide what works best for this piece and start laying down paint then you can oil up your chest.” She gave him an indulgent smile.
“Ok, you’re the boss,” he said, although he looked somewhat disappointed, and put the bottle of baby oil back in his duffel bag. “Where do you want me?”
For the next couple of hours Stella filled page after page with sketches. Shawn was an excellent model and used his body like a tool, being a bendable, moveable doll doing exactly as she asked. He held the sword as if he knew what he was doing, as if he was the last of the Highland warriors, born to the weapon, generations of combatants pooled in his genes. His muscles sprang to life with the weight of it giving her pause as she watched him wield the weapon. Had she been prone to being easily impressed by male beauty she might have swooned. Stella was impressed, however, that he was able to give her exactly what she wanted when she asked for emotional range. Noble. Sad. Loving. Angry. Tender. Whatever she asked for he reflected that emotion, right down to the glint in his eyes. He was good. Very good.
As she drew the many images of Shawn she couldn’t help wondering about the real Robbie MacDougall and what he might have looked like. Certainly nothing like Shawn. He probably, as Kyla suggested, looked and smelled like a bear. The 1600’s had not been an easy life and Robbie may have been a strong man, but he wouldn’t have been ‘chiseled’. Only hours at a gym could cause chiseling. Robbie may have been powerful, maybe tall, but never chiseled.
As the hours passed she began to feel a slight niggling in her mind that she was heading in the wrong direction with Shawn. She didn’t know why she knew it, but she did. He wasn’t right, he wasn’t Robbie. She knew he wasn’t even though she had no idea who Robbie might have been or what he may have looked like. To begin with, he would not have had highly coiffed hair. His hair would probably have been an egregious wiry mess that hung down past his shoulders or gathered in a queue, washed every summer. Nor would he have had the smooth as glass chiseled chest. In fact, no part of him would have been smooth as glass. He would probably have been blanketed with battle scars, pock marked from disease, and hairy as a gorilla.
A small voice began to emerge in her brain. ‘Not Robbie, not Robbie, not Robbie.’ A dark, uneasy feeling grew in the pit of her stomach and she knew that there was no ‘magic’ in Shawn. S
he felt a shiver of goose bumps and the hair on her arms stood up like antennae. She felt a ‘whoosh’ of cold wind pass by her and she knew something was in the air, something that was going to alter her ‘vision’.
Frustrated that she was being ‘interrupted’ by a force not her own, she threw down her pen and sketch pad. “Shawn, lets finish for today, I need to look over these sketches and make some decisions. Besides you must be tired, you’ve been posing for hours now.”
“Actually, I’m good. I can keep going, if you need me to, but if not I’ll head to the gym.” His smile was engaging and in spite of herself Stella smiled back. Of course he was going to the gym. He was going a ‘chiseling’.
“Go on to the gym and let’s pick up again tomorrow. I’ll be ready to put some things on canvas tomorrow. You good with that?”
Shawn was pulling his T-shirt over his head. He did not mess his hair. Not one strand had fallen from its place even with a T-shirt being pulled over it. Perhaps he was computer generated. “Ok, tomorrow is good for me. Do I need to bring anything special? Props, clothes? I have a larger sword if you’d like.”
“No, I have everything we’ll need,” she assured him. He obviously was ready for anything. She didn’t doubt that he had more modeling props than her and she had a lot. She began turning off the lights and putting her pencils and charcoal back in their place. She may have been a rather casual housekeeper, but her studio was as organized and orderly as an operating room.
She ushered Shawn out, wanting to be alone with her thoughts and confusion about this commission. She locked the door behind him, grabbed her sketches and went back to the dining room.
She looked out the dining room window. There was Casper still under the tree, looking up at the squirrel. She wondered how long he’d been there. He was a medium sized, long haired dog, somewhat like a retriever, but not. Like a setter, but not. A dog of mixed genealogy for sure, but sweet natured and always happy, especially when he was barking at something.
She thought about where Casper came from and what his first home might have been like before he came into her life. Casper was a mystery, and his very existence puzzled her, but she had grown to love him and she was determined that he stay with her. She wasn’t sure she could send him back anyway, but perhaps he would leave the same way he came. She hoped not, but there was no way to control it, was there?
She opened the door and called for him. He chuffed at the squirrel one more time and came trotting back into the house. He headed straight for his food dish…which was empty.
“Sorry, Casper, let me get you some foodies.” Casper sat by his dish and watched her go the refrigerator. She mixed cooked rice, some chicken, some canned peas, and a small amount of dried dog food, a complex, extravagant meal for a dog, but one that she was happy to provide. Casper deserved to eat like this because he’d come a long way to be her dog and she was going to make his stay a happy one. She watched as he ate with gusto. He seemed like such a normal dog. But her life seemed like a normal life, too.
She returned to the refrigerator and got herself a carton of yogurt, a few Oreo cookies and a diet soda, her excuse being she needed comfort food because she was very uncomfortable. She sat at the dining room table and spread out the sketches, looking intently at each one.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The voice again. Stella felt an odd tingle and knew something was about to happen. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she knew it had to do with this painting, these sketches.
Stella ate her yogurt slowly, staring at Shawn’s image. He fit Kyla’s directive perfectly and she wasn’t surprised that the agent had sent him. He was her ideal of what was wanted, the romantic figure, the handsome warrior. And why not? It was Kyla’s job to find the artist that would best bring the book’s characters to life. Physical beauty seemed to have so much importance over spirit and character for so many people. Yes, it was shallow, but it paid well if you could deliver the goods and that was what Stella was doing – delivering the goods. This was her job, after all, and she was in no position to be making moral judgments. It meant a paycheck. This was not a big deal, outside of the money. It was a job, not a personal goal. A job. If these people wanted a made-up beautiful man instead of the real one then that is what she would do. They were paying her to provide their interpretation, not hers.
Stella thought about her truck and the life that was slowly leaking out of it. She thought about her painting at the gallery that was NOT going to be sold. She thought about mortgage payments, credit cards and getting her nails done. She thought about feeding herself and Casper and unexpected bills and surprises. She thought about the huge expense of keeping her horse boarded. None of that was going to happen unless she got some money in the bank pretty quick.
So just DO IT, Stella!!
She abruptly slammed her carton of yogurt on the table, grabbed the sketches and headed back to her studio. Casper followed in her wake.
She turned on the bank of lights overhead. It was already late afternoon, but she was getting ready for another all-nighter. Casper curled up on his special overstuffed studio chair and went to sleep, his favorite place to be in spite of the smell. Paints and turpentine were harsh scents that in no way came close to the smell of a squirrel or his mistress’ dirty clothes, but it made him happy because she was here and that was good enough.
Stella approached her canvas and stood looking at the primed, clean surface. She felt the familiar tingle in her hands and face as she pulled out brushes and tubes of paint. An empty canvas was a locked door and she held the key. She knew what she wanted to be behind the door, but sometimes the canvas surprised her.
She always approached life-size projects with some trepidation. They were always so untrustworthy. Stella knew her talent was special and that she could render an image identical to reality. Sometimes, however, the canvas didn’t always do her bidding. Sometimes the canvas was in control, not her. She was always concerned the canvas would not deliver its promise and leave her disappointed. Or worse yet, that it would deliver more than she was ready for. This time she knew that no matter what she put on that canvas something extraordinary was going to happen. She was afraid, but exhilarated. She was ready.
Her work was the total sum of all her senses so she engaged all of them when painting. She lit a few sticks of heather and pine scented incense and placed them in a wooden holder, gently blowing on them. The incense released its richness and the smell of the Highlands floated gently through the air, creeping from wall to wall like fog. The smoke touched her clothes, her hair, her skin, lighting up her brain with an amber light. Tingling, embracing. The stirring odor opened up her mind’s eye and she saw the craggy hills, the forests, the blue lochs. She could smell the heavy underbrush of the forest, decomposing matter giving life to the ancient forests. She heard the golden eagles and ravens calling as they swept through the air, searching for food. Her work increased in brilliance whenever all her senses were stimulated and of all the senses, she was sure smell was the most provocative because it was the most mysterious. Its function was all pleasure, giving delight and cloaking her in sensuality and beauty and a trance like state where her work became the stuff of magic.
Stella went to the book shelf and rummaged rather quickly through her CDs. She found the Celtic music she loved so much and popped it into the CD player and let the music fill the studio. The music of pipes, fiddles, and drums filled the room releasing magic into the air and lazily weaving a landscape with the incense. Spiraling flutes enticed her to new heights of awareness and welcomed her with melodies that had emboldened lairds and lassies in centuries past. She had a fleeting glimpse somewhere in her brain of a warrior, clad in a red and blue plaid, his strong body defined by this music. He stood just out of reach, but he was there, beckoning her.
She grabbed her sketch book and began to closely study Shawn’s image. She tore out the best sketches and laid them on the floor in front of her easel where she could easily see them. She chose the sketches she thought
were the closest to what Kyla would want, grabbed a piece of charcoal and began sketching out Shawn’s image on the canvas. The sketch was Shawn wielding his sword with both hands, ready to swing it forward to plunge into the heart of an enemy.
The charcoal was warm in her fingers, pouring its soul into the image of a hero. She loved the feel of the charcoal’s grainy drag across the canvas leaving in its wake the shape of a warrior, while the smell of damp forests and heather fleshed out his spirit, his image rising from the depths of some mystical place. Stella wanted to see him, to feel him, and her hands became the conduit for magic. She picked up a graphite pencil in her other hand and, using both hands, unleashed Shawn’s image, letting him explode onto her canvas in all his spectacular beauty.
The music spurred her hands, a waltz of skill and magic, coalescing in the birth of a warrior, each line a masterpiece of precision and detail.
She prepared a shallow bowl of raw umber acrylic glaze and began putting in the underpainting, laying down the details in the diluted brown. Once the details and light values were done she let it dry while she prepared her oils. She filled her palette with her prism of colors and then began the real art of painting – the mixing of colors. She layered in washes of color, building a skin tone that blew the breath of life into her image.
As the evening stretched into night she didn’t stop until she had exactly what she wanted – Shawn in all his glorious perfection. Shawn, the Apollo, the beautiful Highlander warrior. Stella stepped back from the canvas, folded her arms and smiled. It was an amazing rendering.
The hour was late and Stella began to feel fatigue move across her shoulders. She was exhausted with her efforts, but happy. She would need to let the oils dry for a week before she began layering in the secondary color and values, but in the meantime she needed some sleep.
“Hey, Casper, come look at this and tell me what you think. Give me your highly experienced opinion, my friend.” Casper lifted his head at the sound of his name and looked at Stella anticipating some small snack. When none was forthcoming he yawned and curled back up on the chair, playing tag with sleep.
Highland Portrait Page 2
