When I was young I had a habit of rising at the crack of dawn. I had no interest in sleeping past six in the morning, even though my parents tried everything they could to get me to stay in bed just a little longer. Finally, when they realized that my internal clock had its own agenda, they agreed that I could get up as long as I was quiet and just watched television. The only problem with this is that there’s nothing on at six in the morning on a Sunday. Until one morning I came across the show with the weird French guy who did landscape painting with oils.

I started out watching him because it was better than watching televised church or infomercials, but eventually I grew to love the strange French man with the soothing voice and his lovely landscape painting. He would create trees by simply dabbing a brush loaded with paint against the canvas, and streams by performing a simple side swipe with his brush across the paint to smooth it out. He made it look so easy that I began thinking I could do landscape painting myself. Only my paintings would have to be in crayon, as crayons were the only art tool at my disposal.

I began a ritual. Every Sunday morning I would wake up at six and turn on the landscape painting show. I would sit on the couch with my crayons and drawing paper trying to replicate what I saw on the screen. I created some pretty pictures but they were nothing compared to the French man’s work. I decided I needed oil paints to make my work really come to life.

Since at the age of seven I had no way of acquiring oil paints on my own, nor was I able to convince my parents to buy them for me, I had to get creative. And this is when I decided that the only place I could find reasonably accurate landscape painting tools would be my mom’s makeup bag. I used an old box as my pallet, and mixed all the creamy makeups I could find. I used lipsticks, creamy blushers and eyeshadows, and any time I needed to blend the colors to achieve a muted effect, I would simply add a few drops of beige foundation and that would do the trick. I used a blush brush to paint my creations onto construction paper, and an eyelash separator to achieve subtle shading effects.

Unfortunately, my makeup-based landscape painting lasted exactly one Sunday. Once my mom had seen what I’d done to her makeup I was forbidden to paint ever again, which immediately crushed my alternate idea of using food as paint the next time. Eventually I stopped watching the French man and his beautiful landscape painting because it was too painful being restricted to simply watching, unable to create my own beautiful landscapes.

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Originally Posted on 11/7/2006 5:07:09 AM