Sitting for Sabrina

So I’ve been sitting for Sabrina for a couple weeks now, and I think she’s finally arrived at a pose for the picture. So far she’s spent her time doing what she calls “preliminary sketches” of me in all kinds of positions. She’s sketched me standing, sitting, shirt on, shirt off, ball cap on, ball cap off, facing her, head facing in every direction but backwards – I reckon it’s hard to settle on one pose for your model when you start a picture. But I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know how fast other artists make up their minds.

She did decide she wanted me standing (Luke is sitting in his picture), and she showed me the canvas she wants to use. It’s bigger than the one she used for Luke because she says she wants to show some of me below the waist too.

So I think she’s going to paint me standing, with my hands in the pockets of a pair of baseball pants. She wants my shoulders relaxed and is still trying to figure out the exact way she wants me to hold my head. She wants me that way because she says my two best features are my face and my shoulders. I’ve been warned that it’s going to get uncomfortable posing like that for a long stretch of time, but I’ve already said I’d sit for Sabrina, and I’m pretty excited about it. Even if I’m gonna need my Brookstone massager when I get home lol.

She knows as much about baseball uniforms as I know about painting, so she asked me if they made blue belts. Of course they do: look at the Dodgers. Well, some of the Dodgers. They’ve gotten lax about uniform colors when it comes to the things you wear besides your jersey. A little too lax, if you ask me. Our college coach didn’t want us wearing a whole lot of extra stuff: “uniform,” he said, “means you look alike.”

What she’s not sure of yet is if she wants me shirtless or wearing an unbuttoned baseball jersey. She’s sketched me both ways, and says she’ll make her decision this week. The problem I mentioned was which jersey should I wear? I still have my Crawdads one, but those are red and black, and she’s told me she wants blue in the painting. I could always wear a Dodgers jersey, but I don’t know that I want to become “famous” wearing the jersey for a team I wasn’t on. (The Parrots just have tshirts, so there are no jerseys for me to be painted in.)

She’s sketched me a few times wearing a ball cap (we’ve been using a Dodgers hat), but she’s decided against it. She likes the idea of painting a ball player in a ball cap, but she doesn’t like the idea of the cap’s visor hiding my eyes. When I suggested we turn the cap around she said she didn’t like the effect at all. Joyce thinks I look “adorable” in a backwards ball cap…but to each her own.

I know my job is to stand there and look pretty lol, so the ball cap and jersey are the only things I made a suggestion about. I really know nothing about painting a picture. Y’all may be keeping a list of the things I can’t do: play basketball, dance, jump rope…and you can add draw to that list. I can’t even draw a decent stick figure. Really: I had an art teacher who made fun of my stick figures and showed them to the rest of the class to laugh at. That’s why I stopped taking art as soon as I could. But it’s like Meemaw says: the Good Lord is fair, and those people who can draw probably can’t throw a strike 120 feet to a 1^st baseman on the other side of a baseball diamond.

So far it’s been fun being over at Sabrina’s. Her studio is a nice, big room with big windows, but since I’ve only been there at the end of the day, I haven’t gotten the full effect of the southern exposure that I’ve been told is so important to artists. There are art supplies all over the place and dropcloths on the floor – the whole place one big mess, but that makes it feel comfortable. Sabrina’s also been nice enough to have a beer on ice for when I get there so I’ll relax a little before she starts moving me around on the little stage she’s got for the model to stand on. It’s a little weird, having her move my head around a few inches one way and then a few inches the other way, but I reckon that’s what artists do.

And it doesn’t feel gayass at all lol.

Sabrina’s got no idea how long it’ll take her to finish the picture (once she’s started it.) She said that she sometimes gets into a groove and paints real fast, and sometimes she gets stuck. I’m not sure how I’m going to juggle Sabrina and Lucas once he gets back from baseball camp, but there’s probably some way I can manage. I’m definitely enjoying the experience.

So we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep y’all posted.