Watercolors

Whenever I think of painting I think of a cheap tin of watercolors, the kind that you packed in your bag to take with you on your first day of school. They always came with a complimentary paintbrush tucked into a slot in the middle, and they had a very distinctive smell. Sort of like crayons, or pencils, or new wooden rulers. Come to think of it, most school supplies have a very distinctive smell. But then, I do tend to smell everything, so that might explain things.

Painting with watercolors is a scene that I can re-create very vividly in my mind. There’s a cup of water, which has taken on a very unappealing milky-brown hue. There’s a piece of waste paper, which is used to blot paint and test colour. There are drips on the page where there oughtn’t to be drips, thanks to too much water on the brush. And there’s the act of swirling your wet brush in the dry paint, making circles until it’s just the way you want it to be. If I close my eyes I can even hear the sound it makes.

Some flowers we picked on a walk, serving as inspiration

Now I have children and we have tried a few different kinds of paints, but watercolors work best. They are the least messy, being solid and spill-proof when they’re not in use. They are also by far the easiest to use, since you open one lid and have access to all the colours in one spot. You don’t have to open bottles and dole out small portions of 6 colours individually, or deal with the messy fingers that come with finger painting. Watercolors remain my paint of choice.

Hannah at work with her watercolors

Watercolors have their faults, to be sure. Somehow darker colours always end up on top of lighter ones, obscuring the true shade. I doubt any clean little white cake has stayed white in the entire history of watercolors. Getting just the right ratio of paint to water can be a challenge. Paint that is too watery or too dry is neither satisfying nor good for painting with. And certain colours always run out first. Black and pink are gone while that weird yellow-green remains untouched. And of course watercolors aren’t terribly vivid.

Hannah concentrates on her painting

Nothing in life is perfect, but much is still good. And I think that watercolors fall into that camp. Still good. Our colours are all mixed up, and the glass of water is never clean. Sometimes the baby gets into them while they’re still wet and that’s a total fiasco. And there was that time that 2-year-old Hannah painted her feet blue and tracked the colour through the whole house. That was not a fun evening.

But in spite of the lack of perfection, I love watching my daughter paint. She concentrates so deeply, takes her time, lays out her materials just so. She’s absorbed by painting in a way that’s second only to watching television, from what I can see. For the price of a tin of watercolors, I have a little painter. It’s so, so lovely.