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“These are incredible,” I breathed. “Where’d you learn how to do this?”
“Lots of practice,” Jackson said with a grin. “I’ve always done it — when I worked as a lawyer, I used to get into trouble all the time for drawing pictures in meetings.”
“You were a lawyer?” I asked, surprised. It was the last occupation I would have expected Jackson to have: his long hair, tattoos and that energetic glint in his eye would never have been accepted in a courtroom. There was no way I could imagine him in a conservative workspace, and a law firm? It was like imagining The Hulk doing ballet.
“Yep,” he said, as he flicked through his phone. He blew up a photograph of him in a suit and passed it to me. “This was ten years ago.”
The difference between him now and then was stark. Right now, on the couch with his hair slicked behind his ears and the tattoos on his arm visible under his t-shirt, he was born to be a tattoo artist. But the man in the photo looked like he’d never stepped outside a corporate office. He was pale and slim, with slightly rounded shoulders that his ill-fitting suit accentuated, and an awkward smile, like he didn’t know how he’d managed to get there in the first place. His hair was close-cropped, and I would have been willing to bet there were no tattoos under those gray suit sleeves.
“Holy fuck,” I said, and passed the phone back to him.
“Yup,” he said. “That was a long time ago.”
He tucked his phone into his pocket and flicked through his sketches without saying anything.
“I used to draw before my mom died,” I confessed.
“Oh yeah?” Jackson asked. “Can I see some of your work?”
I shook my head.
“I threw it all out. After mom passed away, everything felt meaningless.” I remembered the pictures, how amateur they looked when I was living under the weight of so much grief. I felt like they’d wasted time that I could have spent with my mom instead.
Every time I looked at them, I felt guilty. I regretted throwing them out later, of course, but at the time, it seemed like a necessary purge.
Jackson looked at me with thoughtful eyes.
“It’s never too late to start again,” he said, and opened a drawer, pulling out a new sketch pad and a stick of charcoal. He passed them both to me and I stared at them.
“What should I draw?” I asked. I was so out of practice, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to draw the glass I’d poured my juice into.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jackson said, and pointed at the shelves. “Draw that vase.”
It didn’t look like an appealing subject — it was a white ceramic vase on the bookshelf in the corner, with a Moroccan design painted on it. Considering that I was out of practice, I knew it would look flat — I lacked the skills to bring out its shape and make it look three-dimensional.
Still, Jackson looked expectant, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. I gave it a go, squinting as I sketched the outline, and did my best to give it shape.
Despite my best efforts, the final sketch looked like it had been drawn by a six year-old, with heavy lines and no perspective. I passed it to him and before he could react, said, “How do I fix it?”
Jackson considered the page. He looked at the drawing, then up at the vase.
“I’d start by looking at where the light’s coming from,” he said. “You’ve done a good job of making the foreground lighter, but it looks like the brightness comes from all directions.” He studied the lamp, and pointed to the window on the other side of the room. “In this case, the sunlight’s streaming through those two windows.” He grabbed an eraser from the drawer and used it to rub two white circles into my shading. “So, in this case, the light is shining here — and here.”
My sketch already looked better.
“That’s amazing,” I said. “What else would you change?”
“Looking at the source of light again,” he said, and closed one eye so he could squint through the other one, “I’d draw a shadow behind the vase here.”
His fingers brushed against mine as he took the charcoal from me. The darkness he added with the flat part of the charcoal stick really did make the vase pop. “And here,” he said, as he gave the edge of the vase a subtle layer of gray behind it.
“Shit,” I said, as I took the notepad from him.
“You could always add perspective to really give it dimension,” he said. “Add the bookcase, cover the base of the vase with the shelf, add the books, things like that. But I think this is enough for now.”
He passed it back to me. His edits, instead of discouraging me, had made me feel even more motivated because they were so simple I could have done them. I wanted to try again — to draw something that would pop off the page, the way his pictures did.
The only thing was… I never used to sketch household objects. I found them boring and usually abandoned the project before it became good. Whenever I had the chance, I drew people. Especially my mother, the volunteers, and her nurses. My sketchbook, when I’d thrown it out, was full of drawings of women. Most of them were rushed, but all of them captured something about the person.
