Blue Period volume 11 - Tsubasa Yamaguchi

 Time to revisit our favorite manga about art, with the next volume of Blue Period.

And Yaguchi starts to realise he needs an income as TUA is an expensive course.

He reacts to an advertisement, and to his amazement comes out at his high school art teacher, Saeki-sensei, who also runs art courses for children.   He is assigned the group of 3 to 5 year olds for his day, but one of the kids clamps him up in a discussion about Picasso.   This causes him to study more on the artist, and Haru asking about him.  They go together to an open exhibit, where he teaches Yaguchi the points of Picasso's art and cubism.  Learning how expansive Picasso was as such, as he makes a paralel with the anime shows he saw as a kid.

This makes him decide to look at art with his own eyes from now on, instead of guided by opinions, while as a return favor Haru asks him if he can join the teaching job as he is intrested in the art children make.  He joins miss saeki's class as a teacher as a result, and while Yaguchi bonds with the parents mostly, Haru and his braids are a hit with the children.

Yaguchi learns that one of the kids, Miku, is partially colourblind.  Miss Saeki arranges a field trip to the park to teach about colours and how everyone sees the same colour differently.  But when Shoya's mum comes to pick him up, she barely cares about his art that he made, making Yaguchi realise this might be the reason why the kid is unmotivated in class.  As he talks with Shoya outside the class, he finds out he loves to draw mecha and forming a bond Shoya starts to blossom open in artclass.

Saeki tells the children that in april, for the end of the course, they will rent a small gallery to hold an exhibition, with the children able to show off their artpieces.  Haru asks wether Yaguchi wants to consider joining him on a trip to Europe next year in order to visit various special exhibitions.  Back in class, he notices that Sae, a young girl who attends a lot of different extra classes like art, swimming and more might be reaching her limits, as he sees how her art is changing.

In two weeks, Studio Saeki's art class exhibition opens, and the children start the preparations.  During these practice presentations, Sae breaks down and starts crying as she thinks of herself not good enough in anything she does.  Haru goes to visit her and together they make a collaboration piece to giver her a breather, but when her dad, with the best intentions, wants to rip the piece in two to give each a half she quits the art class as well as all her other classes, her parents realising they have been pushing her to hard.

As the exhibition begins, Sae and her dad come to watch and wish Haru the best of luck with his studies, although he believes he isn't made out to be a teacher.  Their part-time job comes to an end, as holidays are over and Yaguchi returns to TUA campus to start his second year...