“If you look at the paper, you’re looking at the wrong thing. You’re not seeing, not translating at all. You’re faking it. It won’t be as good. It won’t be real.”
Kammi turns to look at me. “Your mother looks at her canvas. She draws a faint line across it before she even starts.”
I nod. “She’s setting the Golden Mean, dividing her canvas.” Anchoring herself. Mother doesn’t trust that she will know where she is by instinct.
“Maybe you should start with drawing,” I say. Mother’s mantra.
Kammi shakes her head, her small mouth set. “No.”
I smile, but she can’t see me.
“Okay. Just remember, you wanted to paint landscape. Keep your eye on the horizon. Hold your brush against the dry paper.”
“But the sea’s so far away.”
“Why do you think this is about painting the sea?” I ask.
Kammi looks at me and frowns.
I stretch my arms. “What’s all that? In front of you?”
“The whole park?”
“Sky, stupid,” I say, and laugh, but not hard. Not laughing at her. “It’s all sky. There, just at the very edge of the earth, the sea even becomes the sky. That’s it.”
Under her bangs, her eyes stare straight through me, as if she thinks I’ve played a long practical joke on her. As if I’ve somehow tricked her into lugging her supplies all the way up here to paint the sea from a great distance.
Finally, when I don’t laugh and say the joke is on her, she turns to look where I pointed, out toward the horizon. She leans closer to the paper. She reaches out and splats the brush on the paper, misjudging where it is in relation to her hand, extended by the length of the brush. She steadies herself and holds the brush lightly against the paper this time, barely making contact. Touching it like a blind person.
“Paint what you see,” I say.
“There’s no paint on the brush.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter yet. You’re seeing it.”
Kammi drops her arms to her side, the brush limp in her fingers. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“It’s silly.”
I throw up my hands. “It isn’t. I won’t laugh. Some of my best paintings have been done this way.”
“You are making fun of me. You said you don’t paint.”
“I don’t. Doesn’t mean I haven’t. Come on, this way there’s no evidence.” I use that word again, “evidence.” I soak a small sponge in water, squeeze it almost dry. “Okay, before you start, we’ll do wet on wet.”
“What?”
“It’s a watercolor technique. Mother didn’t tell you this already?”
Kammi shakes her head.
“In watercolor, you can use dry paper and wet paint, dry paper and dry paint, and wet paper and wet paint. By dampening the paper and then painting, you soften the line, the tone. You’ll like it.” I move the sponge across the paper, quickly, but with long, even strokes. “Okay, now dip your brush in the water.”
“Which one?”
“The wide one first. Always.” Kammi follows directions.
“Tap it on the edge. Get rid of the excess water.” I watch her flick water onto the dry earth. “Lightly dip your brush in the cerulean blue. See just there at the horizon, where the pink hasn’t burned off yet? Lightly dip the corner of the brush into the alizarin crimson. Now broadly lay in the sky from top to bottom.”
Kammi’s hand moves to the paper.
“Wait, don’t try to come at it like a mouse. You have to mean it when you lay the paint down. Mean it, but hold the brush loosely. Like a boy’s hand.” I tease her. And she laughs. When her brush touches the paper, her strokes flow.
“So?” Kammi asks when she’s finished, still holding the broad brush in her hand, the paint drying on it.
“What?” I take the brush and plop it into the cup of water. I know what’s she asking, but I refuse to admit it.
“What now?”
“Now let it dry a little, not completely. Then you can tackle the sea. If you don’t wait long enough, you’ll ruin it. The paints will run, muddying up everything.”
Kammi waits, then takes a thinner brush and dips it into the same cerulean.
I sigh. “Did you look at the sea?”
She squints.
“Is it the same blue?” I ask.
“No,” she says, her voice low as she skims her palette for the right blue. “This one?” She points to the cobalt.
“Darker, the water will be a shade darker, and patchier, like the waves.”
She bends over her work, her shoulders tense around her ears.