Nate's shadow melted back down near his feet as Verdigris began surveying the room to prepare her own demonstration. After the brief description, Nate was admittedly a bit nervous. The phrase "shotgun" did not typically bode well for a room with fragile objects.

The first step was for her to show him the eraser, as if she was a magician preparing a trick. She then singled out a paint mark on the floor, (not that it was the only paint mark by a long shot.)

It was over quickly, but he was thoroughly impressed in that time. Her aim was actually better than he would attribute to a shotgun, considering how well she hit her mark before the eraser bounced around, thankfully sparing anything damageable from a quick end.

Nate slow clapped. "Even I have to admit; pretty cool. I just hope you have plenty of control over that." There were about a thousand ways a lack of control with that power could go poorly, and about fifty-three of them would make it pretty difficult to keep a significant other. (At least in proper working condition.)

Nate looked over at the page the girl abandoned in favor of her demonstration. "All things considered for your first time, your outlines aren't bad. Why don't you try shading them a bit. Just don't shake the table; you want to keep the shadows pretty much where they are." Ironic advice from him, of course.

He slow clapped her and she grinned up at him from where she had knelt to retrieve the projectile. The floor seemed even more arty up close. It wasn’t dirty, perse, but the pencil shavings, little rolls of darkened, used eraser as well as the multitude of paint drips, drops, splatters and blobs made for an impressive artwork itself. She knew, she had seen one like it in the art museum.

Ah yes, control. She was infinitely better now than when her power had manifested.

“I almost never shoot myself in the face when I sneeze anymore. Thank goodness that only ever happened close enough to the Laundromats that the random projectiles were all odd socks and a single pair of underpants… That was a bad winter, and a terrible cold.”

She held out her left hand for him to look at, preferring not to stick her middle finger up at him straight to his face, despite the reaction shot that might produce. The fingernail of the tallest finger was gone, shiny scar tissue marking where once had been a nail. She had accidentally opened the portal with her fist clenched on nothing. One lost nail and thankfully merely sprained fingers later she knew better now than to open the portals willy-nilly. There was a process, and if the process wasn’t followed, then people could get hurt.

“I think that was the worst mutation related injury. Or, rather, the worst self-inflicted mutation related injury”

Pretty much every mutant she had met had their own backstory of pain and bigotry to go with their x-gene. From disapproving parents to small-minded towns that went all torches and pitchforks. Hers wasn’t so bad. Not really.

She took heed of his advice and was grateful she made it back to the chair without bumping anything that would mess up her shadows. She carefully began shading in the darker areas of the fruit, and the pools of darkness below them where the light didn’t fall.

((OOC: 500th post!!!))

>> “I almost never shoot myself in the face when I sneeze anymore.”

It was a weird cross between a sudden urge to laugh and a sudden urge to feel terrible for wanting to laugh. He was probably going to compromise with an awkward type of "Ouch, sorry," but turns out her little comment was not done.

>> Thank goodness that only ever happened close enough to the Laundromats that the random projectiles were all odd socks and a single pair of underpants… That was a bad winter, and a terrible cold.”

They had gone so long without a reference to bodies and undergarments, it was bound to come up eventually. Nate sighed off the reference, feeling a small bit of color filling in his tan face. Teaching younger students was apparently less awkward than teaching students who were...

...Wait, seriously, she was barely a year younger than Quin? Somehow he failed to put two and two together there, but now he was vividly aware of how close she was in age to his ex-girlfriend.

Thankfully she interupted his train of awkward thought by pointing out the missing fingernail she was sporting (or rather not sporting,) that he did not pick up on previously. It was one of those details that was small until you saw it up close.

>> “I think that was the worst mutation related injury. Or, rather, the worst self-inflicted mutation related injury”

Nate did not mean to stare, but she was basically presenting the old wound. Nate was lucky enough that his mutation did not lead to much self-damage. "Well, I'm glad that's the worst of it." With a power like hers, it really could have been far worse.

Verdigris returned to her drawings, and Nate occasionally gave her tips regarding pencil choice, or blending methods to make a less pronounced difference between two pencils.

As the drawing was finally taking shape, Nate had to give her credit; for a beginner, she was not as... beginner-y as he anticipated. She was not Rembrandt, but it was certainly a start.

"You're doing pretty well." He took a look at the clock on the wall. "We've still got some time left if you want. We can get another object for you to draw, or we can pull up some images and go over proper human structure-- so you aren't accidentally making everything into a caricature." Sure, they were fun on a boardwalk, but the absurdly proportioned drawings were a disappointment when they were an accident. "Or we could call it a night. You're call, of course."

They were all clean! Clean socks and jocks! It was too late to say that now, the moment had passed. Still she wished that had been part of her little share-fest.

He looked a little uncomfortable for a second and she hoped it wasn’t because of her nail. It wasn’t really that gross, but she was used to it by now. He indicated without saying how much worse it could have been and she had to concur. Some mutations were even more destructive to their owners than the people around them.

He complimented, or rather encouraged, her drawing and she surveyed it. The grapes were leaning a little to one side, like their part of the table was at a different height to the rest, but on the whole it was nice. In fact it was bedroom-pinboard-worthy. She decided to put it up as soon as she got back to her room.

“Hmm.”

Considering how long it had taken her to get the fruit down right, it was probably better not to start another object just now. Going over some of the basics of body structure could be good, as something to take away and think about until the next class.

“If we do some basic body stuff would probably be ok, then I’ll call it a night before my head can’t take in any more.”

Nate nodded; a basic introduction was all he was thinking about for the night. She was making strides, but she was still a newbie at the core. He set up the projector and hooked it up to the laptop he used pretty rarely considering he lived in the twenty-first century.

He gestured for her to put the pencil down for a moment since he was going to start with an example or two. (It was like he was real live teacher-type.) Since it was easiest to teach something from the most basic structure, the human form was most easily described from a skeletal structure. "Honestly, one of the easiest ways to keep your sketches of people pretty true to form is to remember how bone structures actually work. It's great for reminding you wear shoulders are positioned in proximity to a chest, it keeps someone from deforming a drawing's hips, and most importantly to me, it helps you remember ribs."

He did not want to harp on comic art, because it was clearly different than more realistic sketching, but it did serve as a great example for his purposes. "Especially in some of the more cartoony comics, they love drawing characters who are, well, pretty much a chest, hips, and a bit of nothing for a waist."

The image he pulled up was ironically from a site about drawing female figures. "The basics here are fine enough for what they are, but with that beanstalk of a waist, there is pretty much no space for that poor girl to even put a rib cage."

He closed out the tab and continued, "So what I'm saying is remember how people actually work. Well, unless you're just trying to drain money from teenage boys." Disappointing stereotypes existed for a reason, after all.

He fiddled around with some technology and she put a little more shading on her apple. When he motioned, she set down the pencil and watched as he indicated the skeleton. It was like something out of the science textbook. The skeleton looked one way; all the bones were aligned. The skeleton looked the other way; all the bones had shifted.

It made sense, but it was kind of mind boggling to think that that was in there under all the different bits that made people who they were. Everyone was just bones, then muscle, then the skin on top. It made all the human-mutant rivalries seem that much sillier. True some mutants had extra bits, or fewer, or a different kind of skeleton, but still.

He pointed out to her the importance of ribs, and suddenly she could see it. Before, the cartoons looked like they were incredibly realistic, but when she imagined trying to breathe with so little space for lungs, much less move with boobs that size it became apparent that these were not drawings of actual people, more so the imaginings of what people’s idea of attractive was.

It seemed like the basic basics were over, so she jotted down on one of the discarded scraps of paper with half an orange circle on it “ribs!” and “bones”. Glancing up at the screen to make sure he wasn’t merely changing to a different slide her hands started moving to pack away the pile of pencils she had scattered on the desk as she used them.

Nate glanced down at his student, who was making quick little notes on scraps of paper. It was nice to see someone intently trying to pay attention to her studies, when plenty of students typically saw projection time as naptime. Sure, she could not exactly pull off a nap in a one-on-one session, but she was still impressing him regardless.

"Alright, I guess I'll pull up a picture of a person and you can draw out a basic framework, and we'll go from there." He would probably pick something in a more active pose, like a soccer player; something a bit more dynamic than someone just standing around.

Nate closed out the image windows to get to his desktop where he could pull up the internet. As he moved his cursor, he noticed something he never bothered to change: a post-it note type program on his desktop with the reminder "Call Jeweler; Pick Up Anni. Gift." It was obviously a reminder he placed there before his anniversary and before the end of his relationship on the same day. Awkwardly, Nate muttered, "Oh, sorry," not quite sure why he felt the need to apologize to his student as he quickly Xed the note out of existence.

Suddenly feeling his mood sinking a bit, Nate opened up the browser and began searching for an appropriate soccer player image so Verdigris could begin her drawing and he could get closer to returning home, where he could combat his descending mood with a bottle of whiskey.