Chapter 3: Teaching Through Turbulence
The scent of the life drawing classroom was a familiar solace: the dusty sweetness of pastels, the astringent bite of fixative, the underlying smell of old wood and anxious sweat. Sunlight streamed through high, grimy windows, illuminating motes of dust dancing over the chaotic scene before her.
Roz was late.
“It’s not about photorealism, Gary, it’s about essence!” a student named Chloe was arguing, her voice shrill over the low chatter. She gestured wildly at the raised platform where the model, an elderly man named Frank with a patient expression and a worn dressing gown, waited. “You’re trying to measure his femur like it’s a piece of Ikea furniture!”
Gary, a serious boy with round glasses, held up a proportional divider as if it were a holy relic. “But the ratios are all wrong if we don’t establish the basic structure! The pelvis is clearly—”
“Will you both shut it?” another student moaned, her head in her hands. “He’s going to move, and you’ve made him forget his pose.”
Roz dumped her bag on the lectern, the clatter cutting through the debate. Fifteen heads swivelled towards her. “Sorry. Traffic.” The lie was automatic. The traffic had been fine. She’d been sitting in her car outside the college, staring at the steering wheel, seeing not plastic but the stark, sweeping lines of a charcoal landscape on rough paper. The memory of Ally’s focused silence in the workshop, the grim set of his mouth as he’d revealed his private fortification, had followed her all morning.
“Right,” she said, clapping her hands once, the sound too sharp in the sunlit room. “Frank, thank you for your patience. Everyone, eyes front. Put the tools down, Gary. Chloe, breathe. Two-minute poses to start. Gesture drawings. Feel the weight, the tension, the life in the line. Not the measurement.”
The class grumbled but complied. The rustle of newsprint pads, the snap of charcoal being selected. Frank dropped his robe and settled into a twisted, dynamic pose, one arm stretched towards the high windows.
Roz moved through the aisles, her professional eye automatically correcting grips, murmuring encouragement. “Loosen your wrist, Aiden. Don’t draw the outline, draw the energy inside the contour.”
But her mind was split. The careful, considered lines of the students’ work blurred before her. Instead, she saw the confident, almost violent smudge of Ally’s thumb across the charcoal, creating the brooding sky over Lewis. She heard not the scratch of graphite, but his quiet voice in the sterile conference room. That’s the source. The quiet inside the storm.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A familiar, invasive tremor. She ignored it, stopping behind Mo, a gifted but lazy student. “Your line is tentative, Mo. Commit. He’s an old man reaching for light, not a ghost apologising for existing.”
The phone buzzed again. And again. A sequence. Not a notification. A summons.
“Time!” she called, her voice strained. Frank shifted. The students groaned, their two-minute scribbles a mess of frantic lines. Roz retreated to the lectern, pulling out her phone.
Three new messages from Lena, her agent.
> The buyer from Glasgow is intense. He wants the seascape, but he wants to meet you. Says it’s non-negotiable. Wants to understand the “psychic geography.” (His words, not mine. He’s wearing a very expensive coat.)
> He’s offering fifteen percent above asking. This is the “interested buyer” I mentioned. It’s a serious offer, Roz.
> Call me when you’re free. Don’t overthink it. Just say yes.
The words swam on the screen. Psychic geography. The term felt like a violation, an intellectualisation of something that had been pure, desperate feeling. That seascape had been painted after a month of crippling block, the grey fury of the North Sea at Fraserburgh her only subject. It was a painting of noise, of erasure. And now a man in an expensive coat wanted to dissect its soul.
“Miss? Roz?” It was Chloe, standing beside the lectern, holding her newsprint pad. “Do you think the gesture is okay? I tried to capture the reach, like you said.”
Roz blinked, forcing her eyes to focus on the drawing. It was all flying lines, a beautiful suggestion of strain and yearning. “It’s excellent, Chloe. You’ve caught the aspiration of it. The wanting. Now keep that energy for the longer poses.”
Chloe beamed, floating back to her easel.
Roz typed a reply to Lena, her thumbs clumsy.
> In class until 4. Can’t talk. Tell him I’m considering it.
The three dots bounced immediately. Lena was lying in wait.
> Considering the money? Or considering hiding from success again? Be at the studio tomorrow at 11. He’s coming down.
A cold knot tightened in Roz’s stomach. She shoved the phone back into her pocket, feeling it burn against her thigh. “Five-minute pose, Frank! Everyone, find the rhythm. Build on the gesture. Find the form within the movement.”
She walked to the window, needing distance. The college car park stretched below, a grid of muted colours. Success had always been the goal, a vague, shining city on a hill. Now it had a face—a man in an expensive coat—and it felt less like a destination and more like a takeover.
The memory of the workshop returned, unbidden but clear. Not the vulnerability of the other players, but the specific, solid certainty of Ally Fraser in that moment of defense. The way he had planted himself. The unhesitating way he had called out the ugliness, not for glory, but because it was simply, to him, wrong. It was a different kind of strength than the kind that sold paintings. It was structural. Load-bearing.
Her phone buzzed once more. A different number. Unknown.
> Hi Roz, it’s Ally Fraser. Got your number from Jenni. Hope that’s okay. I was wondering if you’d had any more thoughts about the team portrait. No rush. Just curious.
The sunlight on the dusty floor seemed to brighten, the particles of dust turning to gold. The noise of the classroom faded to a distant hum. She stared at the message. It was polite, professional. But it was a thread, pulled from the tapestry of that charged workshop, now lying in her hand.
She leaned against the sun-warmed wall, her heart doing a slow, heavy roll in her chest. The interested buyer. The intense player. Two different worlds, both demanding a response.
“Roz? I think Gary’s having a meltdown.” Mo called from his easel, not looking up from his own drawing.
She pushed off from the wall. “Gary’s always having a meltdown. It’s part of his process.” She walked back into the fray, her voice finding its steady, teaching rhythm once more. “Gary, step back from the paper. Look at Frank. Really look. What do you see?”
Gary, his face smudged with charcoal, squinted. “I see… incorrect proportions.”
“Forget proportions. What do you see?”
He slumped. “I see… a guy who’s probably really uncomfortable. Holding his arm up like that. It’s probably aching.”
“Good,” Roz said, a genuine smile touching her lips for the first time that afternoon. “Now draw the ache. Not the arm. The ache inside it.”
The class settled into a deeper quiet, the initial chaos replaced by the profound concentration of people trying to translate life into line. Roz moved among them, her advice sharper, clearer now. The twin pressures in her pocket had somehow crystallised her focus here, in this room. This was her ground. This, she understood.
When the class ended, the students flooding out with chatter and the clatter of portfolios, Roz cleaned the boards herself, wiping away the ghostly traces of their efforts. The studio was left in peaceful disarray.
She pulled out her phone again. Looked at the two conversations suspended there.
She opened the one with the unknown number.
> Hi Ally. Yes, lots of thoughts. They’re mostly chaotic. The workshop was really helpful. Thanks again for participating so openly.
She hit send before she could dissect it.
Then, she opened Lena’s thread.
> Tomorrow, 11. I’ll be there.
The response was instant.
> Good girl. Wear the black dress. The one that makes you look like a serious poet, not a student.
Roz didn’t reply. She packed her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and turned off the lights. The studio fell into a deep, expectant gloom, the afterimage of the day’s sunlight still printed on her vision.
Walking to her car, the Edinburgh wind plucking at her clothes, she felt the two futures pulling at her. One was a paved road, signposted and lucrative. The other was a rugged, unmapped path leading towards a solitary bothy on a storm-battered coast.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. Ally had replied.
> Chaos is underrated. It’s where most good things start. Glad it was useful. Let me know if you need anything else from us.
She got into her car but didn’t start the engine. She sat in the quiet, the college’s granite bulk looming beside her. She opened her sketchpad, to a page after the classroom gesture studies. She picked up a piece of charcoal from her bag—a stubby, well-used one.
She didn’t think. She just let her hand move.
It started with a single, faint, unwavering line across the middle of the page. A horizon. Then, with the side of the charcoal, she began to build the sky, not from the top down, but from that line upward, a pressing, smudged weight of grey. She used her finger, her thumb, her palm, getting dirty, making a mess. It was fast, impulsive, a reaction, not a plan.
When she stopped, breathing a little heavily, she had not drawn the bothy. Not yet.
She had drawn the storm. And it felt like a beginning.