Dahlia's whole life is flipped upside down when her eccentric aunt enrolls her in a prestigious university in England. She is forced to make friends with a rather eclectic group of people and adapt to her new lifestyle all while trying to find the a...
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There was clay embedded under my freshly painted fingernails, dingy grey contrasting the beryl blue.
Monday and Tuesday passed effortlessly- nothing was out of the ordinary and everyone seemed chipper. Niall had gotten laid while Louis, Atlas, and Zayn got stoned at the party- starting the week off right.
I'm Shakespearean Literature, we'd started reading Macbeth. Instead of listening to a recording of the play, Mr. Browne decided that we would have a better understanding of the plot and themes if we read it ourselves, meaning students were assigned roles, and we read the dialogue aloud in class. Thankfully, I'd been given a small role, Hecate, so I didn't have to speak very much at all.
In art, we started a sculpting unit. We worked with clay, first creating a geometric structure to get used to the methods and techniques, honing our skills, but after finishing that project, we were assigned a second- we had to sculpt a face.
I hadn't sculpted a face before, only doing a pottery unit back in high school, and I usually excelled in two-dimensional art, like painting or sketching, so I was out of my element. The clay was messy, and my arms burned as I kneaded it, trying to get the right density and texture. I used the untidy work as a scapegoat, however, so I could wear jeans to class. Wouldn't want to get clay on one of my nice skirts.
I huffed, forcefully pushing the ball of clay onto the canvas board that was laid out over each of the long tables in the art studio, which was the room adjacent to the lecture room I had my art class in normally. I wiped my hands over my denim-covered thighs and tried to remove the grey crescent moons of clay from under my nails.
"What did the clay ever do to you?" Zayn asked from across the table. His sculpture was coming along well, having the basic structure of the face complete, just a general map of it with brow bones, cheekbones, and a raised peak of clay for the nose, but no distinguishable features. He also plotted lines on it, making a guide for the proportions of the face.
"It's taunting me, I swear." I blew a piece of hair that had separated from my ponytail to fall in front of my eye, trying to move it from my line of sight without using my grimy hands.
I'd spent the past twenty minutes or so kneading, pressing the heels of my hands into the clay harshly. It was excessive- I was just wasting time because I didn't know where to start. Professor Jenkins thought we would be more creative if we didn't have a reference picture and just 'let the clay guide our hands.'
"I highly doubt that. And, I think you've done enough kneading. You should probably start the actual project soon." He didn't look up from his work, molding the nose to a specific shape.
"I know, I know. I've just never done anything like this before- I don't know how to begin," I glared at the clay contemptuously.
"Just think about it like you're drawing. Maybe just do one trait at a time, you know?"
