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[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

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[conning]

“Can you please just let me in here?”

There’s a desperation in his voice he hates.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him for a second, then looks at the door and realizes what the problem is.

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

He opens the door.

[conning]

Neal darts inside, making his way immediately to the art supplies. Refamiliarizes himself with where everything is. Touches things in sequence of use, straightens a few brushes.

Starts to calm down.

[abrightboy]

“Are you going to paint?” Malcolm asks him, lingering near the doorway.

[conning]

Neal looks over at him from where he's gotten caught up in comparing a spectrum of unique purple oil paints, clearly confused for a moment. Then he registers the question. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be here unsupervised."

Not that it would stop him, but he's not eager to get Malcolm in trouble either.

[abrightboy]

"...I don't understand how that's an answer to my question," Malcolm confesses. Had he suggested he had somewhere to be?

[conning]

"...Would you be painting too?"

He's also confused. In part because he's not sure which thing Malcolm is confused about.

[abrightboy]

"That's probably in nobody's best interest," Malcolm informs him. "Art therapy never went well for me. But you can if you want to."

[conning]

“Art therapy isn’t the same thing as just painting.” Even if he does art therapeutically shhh shhh details.

He hesitates, then goes to set up a pair of canvases. “Did you ever have lessons?”

[abrightboy]

"Lessons? No. My mother suggested it for my anxiety. It didn't work," Malcolm tells him.

[conning]

“Maybe you didn’t have the right teacher. Or the right medium.”

He’s distracting himself with this, on some level he knows that, but he doesn’t really care. He guides Malcolm over to one of the canvases by the elbow with one hand. Past the easels, he’s set an upturned bowl on a table, so it looks just like a flat-topped dome. There’s nothing else there.

“We’re going to draw the bowl.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm lets himself be led, looking at the bowl when it's pointed out.

"...We are?" A beat. "We are?"

[conning]

“We are. There isn’t a practicing artist in the world who can’t benefit from revisiting basics.”

He doesn’t notice he technically just referred to himself as an artist. Neal picks up a very light -leaded pencil and wraps Malcolm’s hand around it. “Shapes first, light first. Then we’ll look at paint.”

[abrightboy]

“There’s a lot of ‘we’ in what you just said. You know, I’m perfectly content to watch a master at work. I hang art in my apartment; I don’t paint murals on the walls,” Malcolm points out.

[conning]

Neal makes an amused noise. “I’m not a master.”

He’s remembering the conversation he had about teaching classes in here, now, and the thought appeals to him even more. “There was a warden talking about group art lessons on that network earlier. Come on. Be my test case.”

He guides Malcolm’s hand so the tip of the pencil rests lightly on the canvas. “Shapes and shading.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm draws unsteadily and looks at Neal with a wince.

“Are you sure you don’t want a test case that’s less… art-deficient?”

[conning]

“You’re not deficient,” he says gently. “You’re inexperienced. The only way up is through.”

He steps in again, taking the pencil and showing Malcolm how to stage the sketch, how to capture the shapes of it and focus on the pieces to build the whole. How to mark the light sources and the way light reflects off the curve of the bowl. Somewhere in the middle of it all he starts handing the pencil back and forth with Malcolm, showing him part of what to do and having him finish the rest. “We’re painting over it, so it doesn’t have to have a huge amount of detail. That’s up to your preference. Interestingly, there are some artists whose underpainting layers are as complex as what they work over the top, but it’s not a requirement.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm stares at the drawing.

“…We’re painting this?”

[conning]

Neal actually smiles at that. “Is that a problem?”

[abrightboy]

“There’s not very much to it. Is that the kind of thing you’re going to want to look at later?” Malcolm questions, tilting his head to examine it.

[conning]

“Don’t focus on the end product. Focus on the process.”

He raps on Malcolm’s canvas lightly. “Besides, the subject matter isn’t as important as the person holding the brush.”

[abrightboy]

“Now you sound like my mom’s art therapy facilitator,” Malcolm informs him, but there’s a hint of a smile around it.

He goes to dip his brush and hesitates.

“….Are you going to watch me the whole time?”

[conning]

“You were going to watch me.” It’s teasing, though. Neal has apparently forgotten how upset he was when they got to the gazebo. “But no, I can work on my own.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm dips his brush in the paint, but watches Neal.

“Are you painting this thing too?”

[conning]

He shrugs. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Not entirely true. He’s not painting the bowl, which becomes evident fairly quickly. He hadn’t decided what he would paint until he started, but it ends up being the beginnings of a Degas, specifically the Dancer in Green.