Morning paint

October 3, 2016

Greetings from the canvas,

The sun was just on the verge of challenging the morning.  There was barely a hint in the east, just enough light to show the shape of the road.  The world was quiet, giving Sunday a gentle nudge, not yet time to wake, but soon.

I am warming up, running west, not really seeing the miles ahead of me yet, still deciding how my legs felt.  I am focused on the wet pavement, the sound of my shoes, the rasp of my breath, when the road in front of me disappeared.  Or had yet to appear.

It is so sudden I nearly stop.  I smile at myself, alone in the middle of the road, wishing there was someone I could turn to and say: “Can you see that?”  A solid wall of fog surrounds me.  I raise my eyes and could see the sky exists, hammered steel above me, barely visible in the false dawn.  But the road, the world I might reach, my horizon, is only flinty gauze.

I run on, and the road inches in front of me, one step ahead, becoming real a yard at a time.  A bush at a time.  A corn stalk.  A tree.  A tractor, maybe red in daylight, but not yet.

A thought flits through the fog in my mind; what was his name?  That guy with the afro, quiet voice, on PBS.  Taught us to paint on TV.  What was it?  A dog barks a suggestion.  No, that’s not it.

I know there people living on both sides of the road here, but I only see where I would fill in a house shape. I run over the tracks, wet strips of steel only created as far as the curve in each direction and then are only potential.  No train can pass through until they exist.

My mind wanders, listening to the birds in invisible trees, wondering what gets them up before the sun.  They are asking themselves the same thing about me.  My legs, loyal companions, wonder too.  I can feel the miles in them.  My mind is remembering a quote, but not the man’s name.

Bob.  That’s it.  Bob Ross.

I can see more of the dome above me, light seeping into the October sky.  Dark grey shapes, some fading to flannel now, being lined with a purple tinge.  The tips of the trees appear, no trunks to support them.  It is too dim to see color so they seem to be taupe clouds that have been tethered somehow, pulled into the dull white below.

The trees gave way to farmland, and the road under my feet dissolves from tarmac to damp dirt.  It is not as cool as I expected.  I am already sweating.  A mile in the distance there are unfinished pencil sketches of high tension towers.  Line drawings that looked like robot monsters from a 60’s science fiction movie, marching off to the north, their arms out.  I can’t see their mechanical legs, not yet created below their massive frames.

Bob Ross.  I thought of that tender, soft spoken teacher, showing us how to paint.  “Let’s put a little azure here, and then we’ll come in here and just put a hint of grey again to give it depth.”

The world is being painted in as I move west.  The trees are taking shape now, stretching down to meet where their trunks would be drawn in, outlined in grey and filled in with umber and moss.  The sky, which seemed complete before, needed more color.  It is bruised now with periwinkle and plum. 

The blank canvas is changing too.  From the cool grey to warm white, spreading across the middle of the tableau, wrapping around me, spreading across the soft outlines of the world still forming.

I see kangaroos leaping up out of the fog, springing out of the last of the corn and then gone. That can’t be right, start over. They are deer. Three white-tails disappear into the canvas and reappear in profile, drawn in sepia tones on the dun colored road running ahead of me.  Let’s just put a few spots on the back of the fawn. 

There is blue between the clouds now.  Geese punctuate the sky, drawing a comma as they move to the west, calling consonant recommendations.  Behind them three more form an ellipse, as if to suggest there will be others to follow. 

I am damp from the mist, the morning clinging to me, painting my shirt a darker shade against my body.  East now, running up a small hill.  Now, draw the lines showing the edges of the road angled closer together, give some perspective.  See how it adds distance, depth to the picture.  Now make these trees a little smaller, as if they were miles away.  Add a little titanium white behind the trees, happy clouds just on the edge of the canvas. There.

Now let’s just come in here and mix a little rose and peach up here along the edge of the clouds, right where we see the sunlight lifting the color just a bit. We’re just going to use the edge of our brush here, see just lightly tap the cameo color into the white.

Now the day takes shape, owns more of the canvas, only the creases of the world around me hold any of the blank space.  Color fills in on the trees, mostly green but someone has specked a few with orange and red. 

“You are the master of the canvas,” Bob Ross said, “All you have to do is believe what you want to see.”  Funny how that stayed with me. 

The sun fills in all of the pale places, adding green to the grass, putting shadow along the far side of trees and rocks.  The morning is becoming something else, created in front of me, right there for me to see each color of the day in its origin.  It’s fullest, richest moments, still wet from creation. 

It isn’t until I get home, trudging up my driveway, that I realize how easy it is to not see the beauty once the colors dry.  Once they become ordinary and common and easy to take for granted.  I turned back for a moment and looked to where the mist had been, where only an hour before the world had not yet been painted in.  Easier to appreciate when you know the difference.

Hope this finds you making it real,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith