A secret about
Painting 

It is messy.

But you’d never know that from looking at the pictures of the two girls painting in When the Sun Rose. They haven’t spilled. They haven’t got colors smeared on their hands and faces. They haven’t even got paint rags! Sometimes I wish I’d made them more messy, the way I am when I paint. But then, the pictures would probably look confusing. And I wanted the pictures to be clear.

When I am painting, I mix my colors on white china plates, or in small white china bowls. I have a couple jars of water where I swish out my brushes. And I have a paint rag in my lap. The brush gets wiped on that rag over and over again while I work.

I don’t look at the rag itself very much. But later, I notice how beautiful it is. All those dabs of color! Nobody planned it. But the rag itself is like a work of art. When the rag is so full of paint I can’t use it anymore, here is a secret: I keep it. I put it away in a drawer, because it is so beautiful.

Someday, I will do something wonderful with all those “messy” paint rags.