Yesterday, the teacher of my senior citizen art class was teaching us a lesson on figure drawing. She had tried to arrange for a model, but in the end she brought her husband along to pose for us; he sat quietly in the front row with a Phillies baseball cap on while she showed us examples of “gestural drawing” and shared photos of the work we did last week.

The teacher was dressed in all black, in a long-sleeved T-shirt and leggings, and she did fast poses for us (5 seconds, 7 seconds, 10, 20, and so on) so we could practice capturing the rhythm of a figure rather than going for details. The students in this class are earnest and meticulous, and they try to be painstaking and accurate. Asking people like that to loosen up and work fast is painful for them.

Working fast is my element, though, so I hauled out my brush pens and made my big, bold, messy sketches; I learned a long time ago that it isn’t necessary to get things right. You just have to go ahead and make mistakes, and somehow it works out.

Then the teacher arranged her husband in the front of the room, seated in a chair with one foot up on another chair, a baseball mitt in his hand. It was a nice pose. He was agreeable and attentive, and did his best to follow her directions, and once she had him arranged, we all got to work.

One of the male students said, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” in a plaintive voice, and the teacher went over to help him.

I concentrated on trying to capture the model’s grave aspect and solidity. He had a strong jaw and a firm mouth, and the baseball cap and mitt didn’t look incongruous on him. He sat with equanimity and dignity, never having said more than a few words, and stayed still for the most part, but he kept turning his head and looking in different directions. Modeling is a tough job even for professional art models, and he was doing a laudable job, but eventually the teacher said that was enough and asked for a volunteer to take his place. One of the other students sat up front for the rest of the class, while everyone sketched industriously.

We knew, because she has mentioned it before, that the teacher’s husband has Alzheimer’s, and it wasn’t clear whether he ever quite understood what was going on, but then I’m not sure any of us, ever, quite understands what is going on. We muddle along nicely a lot of the time, though.