Paintbrush Practice

It was Saturday. Ryung lay on his bed masturbating. Today, he was practicing the techniques for paintbrush fifty-three.

If asked what the most important element in a painter's arsenal is, most people would lean toward the paint or the technique. And while they weren't wrong, Ryung had always found that another element--the paintbrush--was often underplayed or ignored entirely. The properties of the paintbrush's handle, bristles, and ferrule all played an intimate role in determining what ended up on the canvas.

Ryung had one hundred and thirty-four paintbrushes in his collection. He kept them in a multi-tier burnished wood-and-glass case. They were organized by how much he paid for them. The brushes in the top drawer were more expensive than the ones in the lower drawers. And the left-most brush in any given drawer was the most expensive for that drawer. While his parents were well off, his allowance was meager, and he had only managed to acquire some of the more expensive brushes by specifically requesting them as gifts for his birthday, and saving up over time.

He had often been asked by other students in the countless art classes he had attended since he was a child how his stroke was so sure and keen. He always told them, "Practice.", but that wasn't the whole truth. He did have a training regimen, but it wasn't something he could talk about. Even the most hardcore painter would balk at practicing each brush for hours on end. Brush practice was different than painting practice. When doing brush practice, the focus was on learning about how to use a given brush to produce some result.

When Ryung began to notice how much impact the brush choice had on what he painted, he made a conscious effort to practice using different brushes. But he very quickly got bored making the strokes over and over. He wasn't like his sister, who could mindlessly perform the same action and enjoy it.

However, when he began masturbating in junior high, he had an epiphany. The position of the fingers and the muscles used were strikingly similar to when he was handling a paintbrush. Acting on his intuition, he began to practice stroking himself in a measured and specific fashion, imagining his hand painting on a canvas.

After a month of practice, he saw a measurable improvement. The problem was the painting he was doing in his imagination just wasn't that stimulating, despite the moderate force he was subjecting his member to. While it was more interesting than traditional brush practice, he found himself faltering.

The ultimate goal was clear: combine traditional masturbation with brush stroke practice, without losing the benefits of either. However, as soon as he switched in his mind from a canvas to a girl, his focus drifted, and he ended up engaging in normal masturbation, and not brush practice. This persisted for almost half a year and he almost gave up.

That was when he hit upon a solution. He had noticed the fact that sometimes he was able to return to masturbation after an interruption. But what if that interruption was a shift to the canvas in his mind?

It took him another year before he figured out the perfect mental pattern.

Canvas

Brush Stroke

Canvas

Brush Stroke

Sexy Girl

Brush Stroke

However, he spent the next two years adjusting the timing. While the tendency was to keep the Sexy Girl in his mind for longer periods of time, there were diminishing returns. He found that after ten seconds, the muscle movements went off kilter. More importantly, he couldn't afford to end his session early, not if he wanted to achieve the ideal stroke.

After all, practice makes perfect.