Just a few weeks before Christmas, Mrs. RickJay, with grunt work help from me, completed the redecoration of our bedroom. This mostly involved painting and the creation of new drapes for the window and dressing area, as well as new bedskirts, pillows, etc. The result was a most pleasing color scheme of navy blue and a sort of dark gold tan color. However, we had no wall hangings with appropriate colors.
I therefore decided that one day when Mrs. RickJay was at work and I was home that I would surprise her by painting a new painting, in hues complimentary to the palette of the bedroom.
Thus began the descent into madness.
I have little to no artistic talent. I therefore decided that my best bet was a relatively simple geometric design that would, in as little detail as possible, create an excuse to display appropriate colors. I decided on a pseudo-impressionist representation of a beachfront. This would require only seven colours; four triangular bands of varying shades of brown and tan as the beach, two shades of blue as sky and water, and a few white triangles as little boats off in the distance.
Mrs. RickJay away for the day, I assembled the tools of my new trade. Mrs. RickJay IS an artist and has all the requisite equipment, so I fetched a new canvas, assembled my paints, and, using a pencil and ruler, sketched out the scene I wished to paint. The sketch seemed pleasing to the eye and so I commenced painting. I needed a dark tan colour with a hint of gold as the first sand color. I began mixing paints.
I have always wondered why it is so my artists are depressed and suicidal. I think it’s because they have to mix paint. I had at my disposal every primary and secondary colour and subtle variations thereof but I absolutely could not get the colour I wanted. I mixed some brown with some yellow, and got dogshit. I mixed more yellow; still dogshit. Some yellow and white, and now my palette was half filled with dog shit. The tiny whorls of color where Mrs. RickJay had mixed colors for paintings long before laughed at me as I created an increasingly large and monochromatic glop of dogshit.
No color seemed to change the dogshit. I finally squeezed on another pint of red to make it at least look kind of rusty, and resigned myself to the colour as my smallest triangle. I applied it, and then realized my entire palette was dogshit, so I had to trudge downstairs and wash the paint off in the basement sink. It crossed my mind that it might be good idea to cut my own ear off.
I prepared to mix a new color. This time I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. I didn’t start with brown. I started with a light yellow, adding a little brown.
Dogshit.
I was aghast. The mixture of colours was in no way the same as the first, and yet dogshit looked back at me from my palette. I couldn’t believe it. I started throwing in white, but simply got lighter colored dogshit. I resigned myself to this color too, applied it, and, muttering profanities, lurched downstairs to wash the pallette off.
Starting again, I was determined to get it right this time. First of all I decided I would use NO BROWN AT ALL. I would also use far less paint so as to avoid having to wash the fucking palette again. I mixed a little yellow with red, and got orange. So far so good. I added white to lighten it. Then I added just a tiny, tiny bit of black.
Soon I was looking down at my new mix of dogshit, shrieking curses surely not of the sort I imagined when I envisioned my placid beachfront scene.
I studied the wall color and decided the problem was that the color I sought actually had a touch of green in it. So I picked up the green and added just a TINY dab of green, and began mixing. To my horror and amazement, the entire batch was soon as green as Kermit the Frog’s ass. I added brown and dogshit sort of returned, only this time it was the shit of a dog who’s been eating grass.
Now gibbering the insane laughter of the damned, I applied the color and went downstairs to wash the palette off.
Thirty minutes of effort then produced a color that could reasonably be described as tan. I applied this. Now I only had to do the blues. I took a break while the canvas dried and tried to think of something peaceful and relaxing, like, say, smashing easels and canvases, or setting artists on fire.
I returned. I now only had to apply two rectangles: one sky blue, the other navy blue to match the navy used in the bedroom. Forty goddamn fucking minutes later, I managed to fucking mix some fucking navy blue that fucking matched the fucking drapes. I painted my sea.
The sky was easier. The color I mixed didn’t look very sky blue to me but at this point I was beginning to hear voices, the sort of voices suggesting you get a chainsaw and head down to the mall for the last time. So I used whatever came out and justified the white streaks in the poorly mixed batch as being cirrus clouds or some fucking thing, which was actually kind of plausible.
After eight hours I had managed to paint a picture, consume enough acrylic art paint to paint an aircraft carrier, get stains in the carpet (fortunately already stained and due for replacement, but still), cover myself in paint, and generally get really fucking pissed off.
Fuck art, fuck my lack of talent, fuck the beach, fuck paint, and fuck Vincent van Fucking Gogh and fuck those fuckers on the TV who paint pictures on 30 minutes.
But Mrs. RickJay liked the painting.
