My dabble into landscape painting showed me how fun it can be to be creative.

When I was a small child, I would rise at the first sign of dawn. I would not sleep past six, even when my parents begged and pleaded with me to just sleep a little longer. After they came to the conclusion that my internal clock was on its own time schedule, they decided that I could go ahead and get up as long as I quietly watched television. This sounded good, but in reality, there was really nothing on at six on a Sunday morning. One morning, though, I came across a show with a strange French guy who was painting landscapes with oil paints.

I began watching this show, simply because it was a little more interesting than watching church programming or infomercials. Eventually, though, I began to find that I was enjoying watching this man paint his beautiful landscape paintings. His smooth voice and strokes would quickly create trees and streams, simply by moving his brush across the canvas. He made it look so simple and easy, so I thought that I could create some landscape paintings myself. My paintings would have to be in crayon, however, since that was the only art tool that I had access to.

Thus began my habit. Each Sunday morning, I would wake at six and begin watching the landscape painting show. I would try to replicate what he was painting on the screen, while sitting on our couch. My crayons and drawing paper created some attractive pictures, but there were nothing compared to the landscape painter’s work. I came to the conclusion that I needed oil paints to make my paintings as beautiful as his.

I could not buy oil paints myself, since I was only seven years old, and my parents wouldn’t purchase them for me either. That is when I decided that I would just have to be creative. The only place that I could think of where I could locate some painting tools was in my mom’s makeup case. I used an old box as my pallet and then used the creamy makeup to make my paint by mixing them together. I used lipstick, blush, eyeshadow, and anything else that I could find to create my palette of colors. A blush brush was my paintbrush, an eyelash separator my tool for shading effects, and construction paper was my canvas. I was ready to create my masterpiece.

As I am sure that you guessed, my landscape painting using makeup only lasted that one Sunday. After my mom saw the mess I had made of her makeup, I was told that I couldn’t paint anymore. This put an end to my idea of using food the next time to create my palette. After a while, I quit watching the French painter. It had become too difficult to simply watch him when I was unable to create my own masterpiece. That was my dabble into landscape painting.