The Forest

This happened. I am pretty sure you would not be able to do this kind of thing today. I am pretty sure you should have done it back then...

Photo by Rosie Sun on Unsplash

The Forest

Art school was way harder work than you’d think.

I assumed that we would just be sitting around in kaftans, talking about conceptual realism and drawing nudie people. We did do that, obviously, but our days were quite rigorously structured.

Studio time was the largest scheduled block of time in which we created most of our projects or completed assignments that were set as part of the course. We had our own ‘cubicle’, which was a long desk where we could put our work together during the day. The studio was open 24/7, and we could buzz ourselves in any time we liked, but we mostly stuck to office hours.

We then had lectures that we had to attend. They ranged from the history of art…to design movements…to concepts of art and creativity. I found them very boring, and I mostly sat through them begrudgingly and had to sign in many of my classmates who didn’t / couldn’t / wouldn’t go. I went to one lecture that I didn’t - in any way understand - it was like the lecturer was speaking in an alien language. I did ask some other attendees if they knew what it was about, and they were as mystified as I was.

Life drawing - because we were on quite a classical course - was something we had to do quite a lot of, and if you were interested, you could sign up for extra ones and even study anatomy. I loved life drawing, and because I was a good draftsman, it was something that almost relaxed me. I chose to do anatomy as well and visited a lab at Glasgow University to see some dissections on sluice tables - they were utterly gross and we lost a couple of people to feinting and a few blew chunks in the loos when we realized that the hunk of meat on the sluice table was a male torso without a head or arms and legs. It was weirdly fascinating, but it gave me vivid, terrifying nightmares for a couple of weeks afterwards.

Occasionally, we would get the opportunity to do day trips. It didn’t seem to be the done thing at this level to do many day trips. We once went to Edinburgh Zoo to draw the animals, Kelvingrove Museum to draw suits of armour, and old steam trains in Coatbridge - but never an overnight stay somewhere. But one term we got the opportunity to draw with someone in touch with the land, someone who was an ‘in the wild’ artist, and we were very excited and all signed up. Even though we were short of money, we still saw this as an exciting opportunity.

After a long trip in a minibus, we arrived somewhere in rural Scotland, some kind of outdoor centre. All I know is that it was about a couple of hours outside the outskirts of Glasgow. We arrived at a set of old cottages and a clearing in a forest with a guy called Zane, who claimed to be a Native American of Navajo heritage and was going to share with us his wisdom on how to get in touch with our souls and draw the spirits that were all around us. It was approaching early evening, and after a dinner of barbequed sausages and some baked potatoes, Zane gathered us around the fire to tell us the ways of the Navajo, and how to see visions..

As far as I could ascertain Zane was about as Native American as Irnbru and more a chancer from Kirkaldy selling bullshit disguised as workshops to starry-eyed art students who are about the most gullible people on this sweet planet…but then again it was nice to be away from the studio and sat around a campfire with my friends eating sausages and shooting the shit.

As the sun set, the starless sky started to turn a murky grey, and the only light was from the fire and a few cigarette ends lighting up individual faces as people drew on their rollups. Zane instructed us to leave all lighters and watches at the fireside and gave us all a sketchpad and oil pastels. He started a low, deep chant to invoke the spirits of the night, of the forests, and nature itself. We all got into the spirit of the occasion (no pun intended) and sat with our eyes closed listening to the crackle of the fire and the odd owl hoot from the woods.

Zane then set us off in various directions into the forest.

It was not quite the dead of the night, and in the grey light, I could just about make out a path - more of a deer track than anything - and tried my best to stay on it to not get lost. Zane’s instructions were simple: walk for 20 minutes or so, find a log or a rock, shut our eyes, and sit there soaking up the natural resonance of the forest and attuning ourselves to the spirits of ancient animals and people who roamed the forest in the past. We would then get out our pastels and let them guide us in our drawings, filling each page with their auras - the spirits themselves would guide us, like automatic drawing. All we would be would be conduits from the spirit realm to this world. Like a modern-day shaman.

Or something like that.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark; an all-consuming inky black that when I held my hand in front of my face, I could not see it - at all. I peered around me and could not make out a tree or even the sky.

I thought I should just get on with what I came here to do, and reached down by my feet for my pastels, dropped the box, and the pastels flew everywhere. I felt around on the forest floor for anything resembling an oil pastel and found a couple…but also sticks and old pine cones. I took my sketch pad and tried to picture spirits or souls in the forest, and then just thought: fuck it and started drawing big swirly patterns with my pastels. It seemed a bit arbitrary and ridiculous, but I filled a couple more sheets and then pondered my next move.

Even with my eyes adjusting to the dark, I could not see anything. If there were a moon or stars, at least I would have been able to see the outline of the trees…but it was a thick forest anyway, and after sitting down for a bit and drawing…whatever it was I had just drawn…I had only a vague idea of what direction to wander in. I hoped that after setting off, I would at least start to see the light from the fire or the cottage. But, I decided to wait a bit to see if the sky would clear and that would at least give me some kind of…grounding.

It didn’t.

So, I shouted out: ‘Hello! Is anyone there?’ Hoping that one of my coursemates would be close, and if I were lost, I would prefer to be lost with someone else.

‘Yes! Who’s that?’ I heard back. It sounded like it was in the opposite direction. She sounded distant.

‘It’s me, Michael!’ I waited. I waited some more. ‘Are you still there?’ Silence. I was torn, now, between heading back to base or seeing if I could find this person. Maybe she got hurt? Maybe she knew the way back? Maybe it was every man for himself, and it would be better if I returned on my own? In the end, I decided to head in her direction and keep calling out.

The problem was that it was dark. Like, really dark. I could not see anything. I held one of my arms in front of me, the other gamely holding tightly the sketchbook and my remaining pastels, and groped around so as not to bump into a tree. I heard a rustle in the undergrowth and swung round, but all I could see was more nothing. I turned back and continued, my legs tripping now and again on a tree root or log. It was hopeless, but I was invested now.

‘Hell -’ My outstretched leg instead of landing on solid ground hit air, I lost my balance and tumbled down a small gully, my sketchbook flew out of my hands, and the remaining pastels jenga-ed off somewhere. That was a tomorrow problem, I decided. I lay on my back, ferns in my face and thought: fuck this. I shouted hello again, but my neighbour/fellow lost soul was either back at camp or more lost than I was. I got up again and brushed myself down, and in all the tumbling, I could not figure out what direction I was headed, let alone what direction camp was.

But I figured it wasn’t cold, I wasn’t hungry, and it’s not like I was in Predator being bitten by bugs and hunted by a bored alien lifeform. I reasoned that if I just walked in one direction for a bit, then I would eventually hit a road or some open ground - or even the camp, why not?

So I stumbled back up the gully, feeling my way along on my hands and knees, like I had been reduced to some kind of feral lifeform looking for grubs on the forest floor. I continued on like this for some unfathomable amount of time. I got used to bumping into trees with my head or shoulders, my knees were soaked from crawling, my hands covered in mud, and there were twigs in my hair.

I looked up and for the first time I could see light. I had completely lost track of time, and I couldn’t judge if it was the first smudges of dawn light or from a house. I was now confident enough to get to my feet and pick through the forest. I could see a light and the dying embers of the fire I was sitting around earlier - I could have wept, I was so happy. I found the pile of watches, lighters, and matches, and took my battered Casio and checked the time. It was 2 am. I had been stumbling and bumping around in the forest for hours. There were plans for drinks and smokes when we got back - I’d missed that, or at best, be on the tail end of the party.

I opened the door to our lodging, it was deathly quiet, and I was worried that I was going to wake everyone up. I was desperate for a shower - I was filthy - and I opened the door to the dormitory. There was no one there; someone had left a bedside light on, and I couldn’t see anyone. Had they all left? What was going on? I grabbed my towel and went for a shower. It was glorious to get all the muck off, and I hung my jeans on a radiator, hoping they would at least be dry by morning.

Outside, having a last cigarette before getting some sleep. I saw someone stumble into the camp. It was a guy called Graham, from Illustration, who had dirt on his face and wild, wild-eyed look about him. I was about to say something to him, but he looked at me and shook his head. He didn’t have his sketchbook either. As the night wore on, people returned - generally on their own - but some had found fellow classmates, most without sketchbooks and in differing states of disrepair and decrepitude.

We had most people left, and eventually, tiredness claimed me and I had to sleep.

In the morning, over a meagre breakfast of toast and jam, we all told our tales of woe, like soldiers returning from the front. None of us - not one - had pictures of spirits and Zane was quite disappointed in us, that us coseted urbanites couldn’t suffer one night in a Scottish forest - in springtime - and that when he was a young teenager he had to survive three nights off the reservation surviving only on what he could kill or forage and sleeping within the ribcage of a bison in Utah.

Yeah, right.

The latest arrival was a guy called Andreas, who was our German exchange student, who had got completely and utterly lost and turned up at 11 am. Even Zane was getting worried and seemed visibly relieved to get our numbers back to what they were when we arrived.

Andreas told us he wandered for 20 mins, tried to draw some spirits, and then heard someone else, so he went off to discover a new spot, but then lost his bearings completely and, after wandering blindly for a bit, found himself on a road. A car came along and he explained the situation to the young woman driving the car, who was a local farmer's daughter (you couldn’t make it up), and she took him back to her parents' place where they gave him a meal of pork chops, potatoes (grown on the farm) and some potent homebrew. After dinner, Andreas explained what he was doing, and they said they’d bring him back in the morning, and that the outward-bound centre was riddled with cockroaches and black mould. They had a spare room, so why not spend the night in comfort?

‘So, did you draw any spirits then, Andreas?’ one of us asked. He picked up his sketchbook and flipped to the first page, showing a rather delicate and finely observed nude of a woman.

‘No, but I did draw the farmer’s daughter. She was very friendly.’

Fucks sake.