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“I’m not so sure about this, Scar…”
“Come on, Grian,” Scar chuckled. “I already told you: you don’t need experience. It’s all about expressing yourself.”
Grian had been stressed out a lot lately, and it was starting to worry Scar. So, he offered to help the other man relax by painting with him. The only problem is that, during the time it took to get to Scar’s apartment, Grian has been worrying about whether or not he’ll do it right. Scar could tell by how his hand reached toward the car door --and his nervous gaze on his satchel full of books-- that Grian just wanted to get back to work, but Scar wouldn’t let him build any more stress until he unwound a little.
“Okay, sure, but what if I try to express myself and it gets translated wrong?” Grian asks as Scar unlocks his apartment door. He snickered at the man and shook his head, receiving an offended squawk. “Don’t laugh at me! I don’t have any experience in art, okay? I’d rather just watch you paint.”
“But it’s not the same! You have to experience it for yourself!” Scar insisted, holding the door open for his friend. “Besides, I can’t interpret your emotions for you. You have to dig inside yourself and really unlock the secret of your soul and-”
“Alright. That’s enough spiritual talk for me.” Grian shoved past him, cutting him off as he observed the tiny, messy apartment. Scar watched as the man’s attention flicked from one detail to the next; he stared at a stack of papers on Scar’s desk before immediately walking over to his series of bookshelves chucked full of tiny trinkets and dusty, neglected books. Scar saw his lips twitch with a smile when he saw Jelly’s bed.
His journey around the apartment came to a halt when he came to Scar’s easel, which held a fresh blank canvas. It still had the plastic on it. It was a 24x36, something he should've used for a project, but he figured the more space Grian had to work the better.
Scar walked up next to his friend, curiosity sparking at the front of his mind. How was the other feeling? Worried? Excited? Did he feel the same overwhelming emotion that Scar could never put a name to when he looked at a blank canvas? Probably not. That did always seem more like an artist thing.
“You ready?” Scar asked instead. Grian sighed, hanging his head.
“Yeah…I guess so.” His tone was disappointed, but the soft smile he sent Scar canceled that out.
Before they could begin painting, they had to set up a plastic backdrop so that paint didn’t get on the walls. If Scar had an actual studio, that wouldn’t be a concern; however, the place technically wasn’t his, so he had to be careful about stains.
Once the mess preparation was completed, they then began to pour paint into cups. A rainbow assortment of colors along with brown, black, and brown was assembled and set in a line on a table set next to the easel.
“After half an hour, we can finally paint,” Grian declared, hands on his hips as he stared confidently at their work.
“Color me intrigued,” Scar gasped dramatically with a hand slapped to his chest. “Is that excitement tainting your tone? Could you, the man who previously insulted me and my strategies, be showing signs of fondness toward the very ideas that you slandered so harshly?”
“Oh, shut up. Alright, how do I do this?” He deflected anything else Scar could say as he walked over to the easel and picked out a random brush from the collection in a cup. “Do I just…”
Scar watched with amusement as Grian awkwardly imitated himself dipping the brush in paint and touching it to the canvas. They held eye contact the entire time, and Grian only became more embarrassed the longer he looked at Scar.
It didn’t take long for Scar to burst out laughing.
“You know what? Forget it.” Grian put the brush down and wiped imaginary dirt off his pants. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea. I’m just gonna-”
“No, wait! I’m sorry, you were just-” Scar tried to gesture some kind of action that matched Grian’s while he formulated words, but now it was him that looked ridiculous.
Grian bit his bottom lip as he tried to fight back a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What was I doing?”
“Okay, now you’re just making fun of me,” Scar crosses his arms defiantly, “and I feel like I experience that enough already.”
“Whatever,” Grian laughed as he rolled his eyes, but his eyes fell to the floor and then to the brush in his hand. The smile had disappeared. “I’m sorry, Scar. This really doesn’t seem to be helping.”
“That’s cause we haven’t even started yet, G,” Scar explained, uncrossing his arms and walking over to his fridge. As he crouched down, he could feel the man in the red sweater looking over the counter. He pulled out a bottle of wine and grabbed a corkscrew from a nearby drawer. At this point, Grian was standing on the other side of the counter.
“Okay, so I had a bit of a plan for the evening,” Scar admitted, adding a twinge of an accent to the last word. Grian tilted his head to the side, encouraging the man to continue. “I noticed when I went to your dorm that you like wine, so I picked up a few bottles of this-” he held up the drink he was referencing “-but I like to do shots, and I figured they get you to ease up a bit.
“So, we start the night off with a shot of tequila, and then I’ll pour us some wine and we can begin your painting session. Does that sound like a good enough plan for you, mister skeptical?” he asked, offering a tiny, clear glass to Grian.
While he was talking Scar had already poured two shots of alcohol, which were sitting on his kitchen counter when they walked. They were tucked away, which is why Grian hadn’t immediately noticed them.
“I wouldn’t have thought you could handle straight tequila,” Grian says with a peculiar smile. “But, yeah. That sounds like a plan.”
Scar’s smile widened into a toothy grin. The two men clicked their shot glasses together, placed them on the counter with a satisfying sound of glass against a dense surface, and threw their heads back before downing the liquid. Scar chased it with a juice from earlier, but Grian just chose to grimace his way through the burning.
Finally, after what felt like an hour, they started painting.
It was awkward at first, and it took Grian a while to get a proper flow. He would hesitate before choosing a color, and any move he made needed a nod and thumbs up of approval from Scar.
“Like this?” he had asked on his first go, pressing the bristles to the canvas and dragging the brush down. Scar hummed, and Grian kept doing it. He did a few times in the same spot, but apparently, Scar was being too quiet because Grian declared that he “was right all along” and that he “isn’t doing right”.
“You’re really stubborn on this, y’know?” Scar sighed. He walked over, grabbing a dry brush. He promised himself that he wouldn’t put any paint on the canvas. “Look, there’s no strategy to it. You’re looking at it like a skill. It’s more like…measuring seasoning. When most start out, they think they need to follow the recipe exactly, but in order to make it work right for you, you have to add personal touches. That’s basically painting. There is no particular way to do it. There is just your own way, and --in a sense-- that’s the correct way.”
Grian looked surprised by Scar’s words. Most of the time when he preached about art, it was weirdly spiritual, but this time it made more sense. It was fitting to the situation. Even still, his nervous grip on the brush didn’t relax.
“But, as I said, beginners often struggle with the personal touch. You don’t have any experience, so it’s difficult to know what works and what doesn’t,” Scar explained with a shrug. “I’ll show you some of my favorite things to do.”
After showing him a variety of brush techniques, such as tapping the brush on the edge of his hand, flicking the bristles, and using different sizes of brushes, as well as getting a few drinks in the man’s system, Grian canvas was really starting to become a piece of art.
Scar could see in his carefree attitude that he had forgotten about whether it looked good or not; he was simply enjoying throwing and slinging paint against a blank white surface, the only goal being to cover every inch of the canvas that he could.
Scar couldn’t care less about the painting, though. All he knew was that his hand itched to draw the man as he was having the time of his life. His expressions were brighter than Scar had ever seen them, and he glowed amidst the chaos of paint and his form of relaxation. It wasn’t just his face, either; it was his entire posture. His limbs swung around as he flung the brush like it was baseball and he was on a field. He laughed as he smudged paint on the canvas, forgot it was on his finger, and then rubbed it on his face.
Scar had never seen him so carefree, and he wanted to capture this moment and keep it in his pocket, but that would be creepy, right? Right. He already drew Grian too much, and it’s even worse that he doesn’t know.
“Alright, I think I’m done.” Grian stepped back, admiring his work. A sparkling smile was plastered across his face, and he turned to look proudly at Scar, who looked at the finished piece. Grian brought his fourth glass of wine to his lips (he can really hold his alcohol) as he said, “I gotta hand it to you, Scar, that was actually a lot of fun.”
“Did you doubt me?” Scar gasped again, but he didn’t look at Grian. He was analyzing his artwork, which was an abstract mix of colors. It wasn’t anything like Scar typically made during his sessions. He typically painted people or random shapes, but that just showed how different his and Grian’s artistic views were.
It was missing some things, though.
“Not as much red, huh?” Scar pointed out. Grian looked back, seemingly realizing the lack of his own favorite color.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said curiously. Scar looked at the corresponding paint cup, noticing that it was relatively distant in comparison to the others, it also still had all the paint in it. He looked at Grian, mischief dancing in his eyes.
“You wanna do something crazy?”
“Always!”
This is how Grian’s signed canvas ended up with a huge splatter of red in the center and covered most of the thing in a layer of red. It was only one, so the colors were visible under it, but it was exactly what Scar thought it was missing.
Grian had fallen asleep on his couch. He had offered to help clean up, and Scar took him up on it, but after he sat down to rest for a few minutes, he had fallen asleep. This left Scar alone with his thoughts and a way to deal with them.
He looked at the canvas. Grian had said before that he probably wasn’t gonna take it home because he didn’t have anywhere to hang it. His dorm walls were covered in “poorly-drawn” building projects. But Scar was welcome to do whatever he wanted to, and he knew exactly what he was going to do. He wanted to try and ask permission first, but the image was fresh in his mind, and Grian looked too peaceful to wake up right now.
So, he picked up his pencil and sketchbook and got to work.
--
Grian rubbed his head with a groan as he got up. It took him a minute, but he realized that he was on Scar’s couch. The event hit him like a trainwreck of guilt: he just left Scar to clean up by himself! What kind of friend does that?
Well, it was too late to apologize now. Besides, he had classes to get to.
He was getting his stuff together and writing Scar a note when he saw his creation from the night prior. It was similar yet different from what he remembered.
For one thing, it was now a portrait of himself. However, it hadn’t been altered except for the extra layer that was him.
He looked…happy. It wasn’t very often he saw himself portrayed like that. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t often he saw himself portrayed at all, but when he was, he was always either exhausted or professional. There was no in-between or positivity.
He pulled out his phone to take a picture, but he decided against it. Only partially could he call this his own art. He didn’t want to cross any lines when he came to the art business.
Guess it would just have to stay in his memory, then.
He did mention it in his note, of course.
--
As Scar drank his morning coffee, he struggled to read the little note that Grian had left. His handwriting wasn’t the neatest, and Scar’s dyslexia wasn’t helping, either.
“Thanks for last night!! I really appreciated it, and I’m sorry I didn’t help clean up. I also would’ve stayed this morning, but I had classes.
We’ll have to do this again sometime!
Grian :)
PS, I love what you did with my painting. Your skills are impressive!!!”
Once he deciphered the word on the page, Scar smiled. He was a little worried about Grian’s reaction, but it was nice to know he liked it.
And he’d have to take him up on that offer.