Landscape painting shows have been featured on the small screen for many years. While they are not particularly aimed at children, kids can get inspired to paint and draw beautiful pieces by watching them.

From the time I was a kid I was an early riser, and from a young age I could not be persuaded to stay in bed after six AM, despite my parents’ best creative efforts to try and get me to sleep in a bit later. They eventually gave up trying and from then on I was allowed to get up, under the condition that I watch television quietly by myself. The main issue with this scenario was that at the time Sunday morning television was not really geared towards youngsters, so I started watching a show in which a rather odd Frenchman was going about painting landscapes using oil colors.

The only reason I watched this show was because at that time of the morning I had a choice between the weird Frenchman and his oil paintings, the shopping channels or religious programs. With time I actually became quite fascinated by his comforting voice and the way he was creating pretty landscapes with his colors and brushes. I became so fascinated, in fact, that I felt an urge to try it out myself, as he was making it look quite effortless. As a young kid, however, my art arsenal was limited to crayons.

It became my Sunday morning routine: I would get up at six in the morning, switch the TV on to the oil painting show and sit on the sofa, armed with paper and pastels to try and copy the landscapes showing in the program. I got some pretty impressive drawings, but didn’t quite compare with the sort of work the show host was churning out week in week out. It dawned on me that what I needed was oil paints, but being seven years old it proved to be a tall order: I couldn’t quite just go out and buy some, and I didn’t quite manage to get my parents to buy some for me either.

Looking around for a creative solution to my problem I thought that my mother’s make-up bag would be a fairly good approximation of an artist’s oil painting materials. I found a disused box to mix the colors on as if it was a pallet. I then set out mixing all the various types of make-up with a smooth texture that I could find: I also discovered that I could also tone down the color of lipstick, blusher and eye-shadows by simply adding a bit of light tan foundation. The blusher came with an application brush that turned out to be perfect for painting, and the mascara brush helped achieve really neat texture and shading.

My artistic future was however nipped in the bud as soon as my mom realized what had happened a few hours later, and I was told never to paint again. This also killed my next idea which was to start painting using foodstuff. In the end I stopped watching the show altogether as I found it way too frustrating not to be able to come up with my own creations too.