The Heart of Him

EVLEWT

Sunlight floods down from the ceiling's wide skylight and bathes the classroom in a warm brightness. The tempered glass makes it so that the rays don't beam down overbearingly, instead, bringing an essence of life to the room that would otherwise be dull and lackluster. Its rows of desks and chairs don't come alive under the ceiling's recessed lighting, and while the source of the sun doesn't make a terrible difference in that, it does eliminate the prison-like aura that's automatic in a room with no windows elsewhere. If it were up to Zayn, he'd rely on it as his only source of light, but that would be irresponsible of him to do while he's in the middle of showing off photographs.

The images are being projected onto the whiteboard at the front of the room. A clicker in Zayn's left hand controls when the next will reveal itself, while a laser pointer in his right is used any time he wishes to point out a specific detail without stepping into the projection and ruining the larger picture.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can make out a raised hand - most likely in response to the point he's just made on how imperative it is to notice the way in which da Vinci drew staircase blueprints around this specific page of his notes. The scattered pencil sketches take up more of the page than the detailed map of a human body's blood vessels located in the upper right quadrant of the paper; the darkening of the stairs and torso portion are respective of one another. Some of the staircases were inclusive of the floors in which they led out to, while others stood alone as lonely stairwells.

Zayn chooses to ignore the hand, letting the person know that he would take questions after he finishes. At the moment, he's too engrossed in the topic at hand - one that he's unable to hide his passion for. He can hear it in his voice, the way he speaks quicker any time he points out a peculiarity in shading or comments on the remarkable attention to detail that only the hand of a genius would be able to depict. It's evident in the way he gestures with his hands as if he isn't British at all, but full blooded Italian like the man he so desperately idolizes. Not only is the classroom his space, his zone, it's also the topic at large that puts Zayn on autopilot and unavailable to any third party distractions.

Click.

"Now, before I talk about this specific scan, I want to point out how Leonardo used blue paper to take notes on instead of the usual white or yellow. As I mentioned before, da Vinci is Leonardo's surname, which would suggest that he was born in the Italian town of Vinci, but he was actually born three kilometers away in Anchiano, about two hundred seventy kilometers from Venice. During the Renaissance, Venetians were the ones to popularize blue tinted paper due to the contrast it would create with shading effects that were popular at the time, and the black chalk that became a common tool in the period's later years. Here, he only uses pen and ink, but it was really the only way he could get the fine lines of the tubes leading into the lungs and heart."

Zayn's rhythm is thrown off once more when he sees the same hand go up, but he tries to recover from his minor pause and continue on.

"This may be a page out of his personal notebook, but look at how beautifully he managed to frame the drawing with his thoughts and comments."

Surrounded by a sea of Italian cursive, lies an illustration of the human heart with its surrounding bronchi and blood vessels, so detailed, that it could be mistaken for a computer generated photo. The lines are as thin as the actual veins themselves, the ink not at all smeared by its creator; proof that he wasn't at all insecure about his depiction.

Click.

"This is a closeup of the sketch. Can you believe someone could so accurately - with only a quill mind you - capture the depth and curvature of the upper chest? A lot of critics wonder why he chose to compare the body so much to the architecture of buildings rather than trees with the way he drew the body. However, there's a simple answer to that question. He-"