Art Class

Art class, sixth grade. Our first attempt at painting. Serious for sixth grade. Sixth grade was the youngest grade in the junior high in our town so we were treated more seriously, I think, than if we had been the top grade in the middle school.

I had always been artistic, and I did paint, but coming from a large family, not much. My parents encouraged my art, but we didn’t have the money to pursue many different artistic mediums. I was quite excited!

The teacher, Mr. Cummings, unfortunately was not as free flowing an artist as I had hoped. He was “teaching” us how to paint as if he were teaching us how to work on an assembly line. First do this, then do this, then this. I kept getting behind because I was fiddling with the paint and the brushes, playing with the canvas to see how things looked. I kept running out of time, the bell would ring and I’d still have hardly anything done.

Needless to say, I never finished my painting, I got a terrible mark on it. Had it not been for the other projects I would have failed art class. I didn’t try painting again until I was in college. From seventh grade on, Art was an elective, I chose not to take it.

In college, I signed up for an art class, mostly because this really cute boy was signing up. I was dying to get to know him. Not so many really cute ones in my business classes. I wanted to quit on the spot when the first project was painting, but he was really cute…

I suppose all those business classes helped when it came time to market my paintings. Never did get a date with that guy though…