[Charcoal on Face]

I opened the box and fished around. I had to take nearly almost all of the contents out in order to find the pieces I was looking for. I pulled out the artist's tape, scissors, conte crayons, "viewfinder", glue, graphite, micron pens, and black pastels and simply pushed them around. I finally found my prized possessions: charcoal pencil, vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, smearing rag, kneaded eraser, and my click eraser. Yes, those were the items I needed this morning. The music in the background held a steady rap beat. I was ready to draw. I drew several layers of heavy charcoal and smeared it off, creating a warm gray tone on my white paper. I highlighted light spots with my erasers. I used my compressed charcoal to darken the shadows of the objects I was drawing. I repeated this process several times. Placing my charcoal stick down, I stepped back from my "masterpiece." I turned my head this way and that observing every aspect of the drawing. I approached it once again, taking my charcoal stick and my rag in hand. I made a few more quick smudges and smears, and stepped back again. I was done. I placed all of my items back in my packed box. As I bent over to place them back, strands of red hair soon covered my right eye, tickling my face. Without a second thought, I reached my hand up to place these stray hairs back. After I had done so, I brought my hand back and looked at it with utter dismay. My hand was black, just completely dirty. And to think that I had just touched my face and hair! Not only did I have charcoal on my drawing paper, I had it on my face and a little in my hair and all over my hands. I turned to one of my friends in class. "Is it [really] bad?" I inquired. He leaned in closer. I thought just to take a closer look. "Now it is," he said as he brought his hands up to my face and wiped them off, per say. His hands were as black as mine, if not darker. He now had a smurk on his face. I stood, momentarily, with a look of sheer astonishment on my charcoaled face. "What?!" I finally blurted out. His smile grew bigger. I can play this game too. I quickly reached my hands up to his face and marked him. He too stood in shock at my actions. He tried to mark me again but I dodged him quite surprisingly. I was able to succesfully mark him again just as he marked my face. With his last mark, he had clearly won the charcoal battle. We walked over to the sink area, over which hangs a rather small mirror. We both stood in front of the mirror, soaking in our new appearance. Our faces were laden with charcoal slashes; our hands were dirty; our fingertips were solidly black, like a reverse Michael Jackson. We still stood in shock and finally broke into a loud laughter. Then we decided it was finally time to attempt to clean ourselves up. I'm not even quite sure how long it took to get my fingertips to a light gray tone. Then it was on to my face. I had gotten most of the marks off, except for the one in which he won the charcoal battle. It too looked like a light tone of gray, a mere shadow on my face. He cleaned up pretty well, without any real noticeable wounds from our war. After class was over, we walked away from the battlefield, without even looking back. Now with my bag upon my shoulder, drawing board in my left hand, tea thermos in my right, I opened the door, leading out into a cold, unknown world. I took my first breath of this cold air. Deeply I breathe in and blow out, seeing my breath quickly dissipate. The fall air is crisp. Wind blows the leaves, which fall to the pavement. The wind also blows my red hair, blocking my right eye's view. I reached my hand up and pushed my hair aside, out of my eye's view. As I brought my hand back down, I panicked. I was sure I would see that my hand was black with charcoal. But no worry, my hand was sparkly clean.