Tonight & Happy Little Trees

This evening I went for a drive. Looking for fall colors to shoot.

Did not find much. Yet.

As I turned onto a road to head back home, however, I saw a row of trees, all of them nearly identical in size and shape, with the sun casting yellow-gold light on their left side. I could not capture the scene on film (or rather, on ... disk?), I knew, but suddenly, I wished I could paint it. The trees. The light.

I remembered watching a man named Bob Ross on a show on PBS. He would start out, as painters do, with a blank canvas, and then, using not all that many colors, really, and just a few brushes, he would paint a scene that looked real enough to step into. He painted mountains and shrubs and clouds and rocks, and darkness and light, and grass, and in the midst of it all, he would add in some happy little trees.

And occasionally, he would use what looked to me to be an ordinary paintbrush. Like, the kind you would paint a house with ... if you were so inclined to paint a house. And he would angle the brush just so, or else he would swish it across the painting, but whatever he did with it, somehow, he created the picture he wanted to make.

After I had been watching Bob Ross for a while, I learned that he had died before I had ever started watching his show. And this made me very sad ... kind of like when I realized that the beautiful Jeff Buckley had died long before I ever heard his music, or at least before I was ever aware of his music. Or someone like Roy Orbison, who for some reason I thought had died, long ago, but of course I found out that he in fact had NOT, and then, just when he seemed to have made the ultimate comeback ... he died!

I do not paint. Or draw.

I can draw, as this picture proves. This is Bert from Sesame Street. A freehand drawing, in fact, and this is the first time I have drawn him in color! He is part of the Ernie & Bert team, of course ... but I cannot draw Ernie. Ernie, it seems, is more 3-dimensional than Bert, and I have a difficult time with that. Which makes me wonder: If someone were to paint your portrait, could she or he capture you on canvas? Are you 3-dimensional? Would the colors be right? (I have never had my portrait painted, but tonight I wondered: When someone paints or draws you, or perhaps even photographs you, and you like it, or hate it, is it because you like/hate the way you look in the picture? Is it because you believe you do not really look like you do in the picture ... or because you do?)

It is difficult for me to imagine something and draw it in full detail. A few times I have studied a photo or a scene and drawn it.

One Christmas break when I was home, I decided that I wanted to make a special gift for my friend Patti. I am not sure what possessed me, other than I knew she LOVED Bruce Springsteen (almost as much as she loved Tom Selleck), and this was not long after Born in the U.S.A. came out. I had the album, and I decided I was going to do a pencil drawing of the album cover: A back view of The Boss, wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, with a faded red hat sticking out of his back pocket.

I used a sketch pad and sort of sectioned off the page and basically did a scale drawing of the cover. I had never attempted anything like this before, and I am not sure what kept me working on it, other than I wanted to give it to her. I remember thinking it was kind of cool how many different shades and textures I could get, and how I could smooth out the rough spots ... and now, when I think back to the process of drawing that picture, I really really like that I sort of figured it all out for myself, as I went along. (I especially liked drawing the details of his belt. Not sure why, except that it was the most intricate part of the picture.)

I think my muse is trying to tell me something, and I believe I need to apply this process to my writing.

I do not know, exactly, how to go about getting all of these characters and stories and words into any kind of order, to paint the portrait I need to paint. Somehow, though, the adventure of it all is becoming quite real to me now.