2-D Art Class

I plopped down in my cold, hard chair in the far back corner of the art room just as the minute bell chimed, signaling the last class of the week would begin in 60 seconds. Standing in groups scattered near the crooked rows of black tables, my classmates excitedly chattered away about plans for the weekend. Since I was one of the few freshmen in this Introduction to 2-D Art class, I did not join in the conversation. Instead, I stuffed my hands into the pocket of my favorite purple sweatshirt and anxiously waited for the class to commence so I could get it over with and begin my weekend. To pass the idle time, I focused my attention to the front of the room. I noticed jugs of paint containing every color of the rainbow. Next to the rainbow of …show more content…
I quickly grabbed the nearest writing utensil and scribbled the idea on a random piece of paper in my green, beat-up notebook. I didn’t want to lose the award-winning idea that had just blossomed in my brain. Now that I had a plan, I was ready to get to work. Without thinking, I reached over, snatched my eraser from the corner of my table, and began to sketch the idea onto the rubber canvas. I slowly began to trace lines onto the eraser, but nothing would show up. I attempted the drawing again and still no lines appeared. Frustrated that my pen would not work, I put more pressure on the writing utensil hoping to see an inky, dark line appear on my eraser. Consequently, the snap of pencil lead breaking filled my ears. The snap of the lead made me realize I was, in fact, trying to write on a rubber eraser with a pencil, not a pen. “Way to pay attention, genius,” I thought. Realizing I needed to relax, I took a deep breath and began to sketch my idea again, this time using the right tool. As I drew the smooth black lines onto the eraser, my masterpiece unfolded. The drawing on the eraser consisted of a large circle with a diamond drawn inside of it. There was also another small circle inside of the diamond. Most of my classmates stuck to carving a simple shape into their erasers, but I wanted mine to stand out. This design may have looked fairly simple, but …show more content…
To begin, I carefully placed the tip of my knife on the inky line that was the innermost circle of the design. With shaky hands, I pressed the blade about half an inch into the spongy rubber of the eraser and traced the outline of the circle. Carving around the circle was relatively easy, so I repeated the step with the diamond that surrounded the small circle. Now that I had the outlines of two shapes cut, I could remove the chunks of eraser between them to make the shapes stick out of the eraser like a stamp. Up to this point, everything was going quite smoothly, and all I had left to carve out was the large outer circle. Feeling quite confident in my cutting skills, I quickly began to carve out one of the four corners to make the large circle visible. It was an easy cut and I finished in a mere 15 seconds. “One down, three to go,” I thought. Next, I moved on to corner two, which was the top right-hand corner. I inserted the knife with the steady hand of a brain surgeon and made another clean cut. Then it was time to move on to the bottom right-hand corner. I routinely placed the blade and prepared for another easy cut. This time, however, I put too much pressure on the knife and it went deeper into the eraser than expected. I tugged on the handle to try and remove the blade, but it was wedged in. Nevertheless, I decided