Going in circles

(Brought to you by Gazprom. The copy taps are shut, this way I look like I'm working. Excellent)

We're a mixed bunch at drawing class - a couple of young, tattooed, dreadlocked boys hoping to get tattooist's apprenticeships, a lass waiting to start architecture studies, a newly-widowed 80-year-old man, J, L and myself.

We all have crisp A3 sketchbooks, newly-sharpened pencils and - speaking for myself - a dearth of inspiration.

I stare at the blank page and pick up a 2B pencil. I am no Kathe Kollwitz. I doubt I can make a line sing. Dag, our teacher, tells us to get a feel for our pencils (mine feels distinctly pencil-like, for the record) and to draw lines. Straight ones.

Tricky one, that. I'm not so good at straight. I can't walk a straight line sober, let alone draw one freehand (sober or otherwise). Even with a ruler, it's a bit hit and miss.

Sod it, I think, I'll draw straight-ish ones and see what happens.

And it's fun. Especially finding out what shades and thickness of line I can get by turning the pencil this way and that, by holding it differently, by drawing quickly or taking my time. I enjoy it, anyway.

My lines are wibbly, wonky, decidedly wobbly, but some of them are quite pretty. Who cares about straightness? It's over-rated.

We talk about circles (calming apparently), squares (solid) and triangles (aggressive). I'm sidetracked by the thought of hundreds of thousands of aggressive triangles on the march, growling angry iscolese-esque threats at all and sundry as they stomp towards ... where? I don't know. I got stuck at the bit with all those jostling, angry, growling triangles.

Now, two parallel lines across the page, a dot on each, directly opposite each other. We're to draw a circle using the two dots as a guide.

Much, much harder than it looks. He doesn't want perfect circles, but he is after something circular. Right.

I try. The first attempt's not so good. The circle starts off circular, but one of those irate triangles must have taken possession of my pencil mid-stroke, ruining the arc. I fail. Badly.

Try again. It's ovoid. Which is an improvement, except I have managed to take the left hand side of one oval and marry it to the right hand side of an entirely different oval. They don't match. Hmm. The teacher has a look over my shoulder and can't think of anything to say. Not even a mumble. The look on his face says it all.

So I keep trying. Over and over and over again. I'm determined to draw something slightly circular. It can't be that hard.

The more I try, the less circular they get. I have to give it up as a bad job. But I'll come back to it. I have seven weeks of this class and if I can manage to circle by the end of it, it'll have been seven weeks well spent. For sure.