Charcoal and Light

For those of you who don't know, I am in the art program at Biola. This is because I wanted to take one drawing class, and that drawing class happened to be at the same time as a required class for those who don't know what they want to do with their lives, Undeclared Seminar. So I was forced to drop Undeclared--or, as would better describe my situation, Indecisive--Seminar and take Art Seminar. Consequently, when people ask me my major I have no idea what to tell them.

Being in a drawing class and Art Seminar with a bunch of art majors means being around innately artistic people for four hours every Thursday. All this to say, it is very hard to decide what to wear on Thursdays. When you are going to spend much of your time with people who understand color and shape a lot better than you do, picking out an outfit can be a little intimidating. So this morning I found myself staring into my clothes and wondering whether I could wear my striped black shirt again without anyone noticing. "No," I thought, "They're art majors. They notice everything." So I finally settled on a red shirt that I will describe to you as "nice." Nice enough that I feel compelled to wear a fancy necklace with it.

I made my way to drawing class, feeling rather put-together with my nice red shirt and my long fancy necklace. And after an enthralling lesson on negative space (I'm not being sarcastic; this lesson came with pictures and everyone knows pictures always keep an audience captivated) we were instructed to start drawing. And then my art teacher added one little instruction, "Oh, when you've finished the outline, shade in the negative space with charcoal."

If you thought charcoal was a great drawing tool, let me assure you otherwise. Charcoal is a cruel, cruel thing. It is a deep black substance that can come in pencil shape but usually just comes in sticks of unadulterated darkness. Charcoal breaks into tiny bits when it gets near a sheet of paper: instead of leaving a mark where you touch it to the page it leaves tiny explosions of black all over the drawing. It fights with every fiber of its being to cover the spaces you don't want it to touch, but then, after all that battle to get onto the page, it refuses to stay there. It leaps back off the paper and onto the hands, arms, face, and nice red shirt of anyone who dares to attempt to control it. The only way to get it to stay is to spray glue all over it (Once again, no exaggeration, we were all required to purchase "spray fixative" in the interest of having something to show for our charcoal battles).

I'm forced to conclude that charcoal is an accurate portrayal of the nature of darkness. It is messy and uncontrollable. But fortunately for me, as stated in Psalm 18:28, "My God turns my darkness into light." He washes off the charcoal, and he restores us to even greater beauty than before. His light is more powerful than any darkness, no matter how messy.

Truly His,
Caroline