Chapter One: Mixing Paint Picture a middle school art class. Student drawings hang against two of the walls. I''m sitting at a table over by a row of tall windows. That''s me, Margot Stafford, the redhead in overalls. My eyes follow Mr. Grunwald around the room. It''s the first art class after winter break, and Mr. G has been talking about color theory, holding up paint chips and throwing around terms like "light absorption.
" Now he''s saying everyone has to pick a color and make eleven versions of it. Why eleven? Before I can ask, he says, "Ten would be an expected number. I want you to push beyond that." He has a heavy accent, but I couldn''t tell you from where. Germany maybe? "Your goal is to make all eleven versions of your chosen color be different from one another," he says. "I know this sounds crazy, but I want you to really think about them. Start in class today and add to them over the rest of the school year. All your versions should belong to the same color family, live in the same home, so to speak.
" My mind catches on the word "home." Lately, I''ve felt my home changing. Mom thinks I haven''t figured out that her boyfriend, JP, sleeps over. I mean, his razor is in her bathroom, and I hear his noisy pickup truck pull out of our driveway in the morning. It''s pretty obvious. Outside, a January wind bullies a bare tree and pushes branches against the windows. But the art room feels bright and cozy. "And name the colors," Mr.
Grunwald goes on. "Tell me where you''ve seen that particular hue in the world." He stops and frees his wire-rim glasses from his nose with both hands. He looks around and then wiggles the glasses back on. He paces. His long smock is stained with dried paint--drips, flecks, splotches, drizzles, and splatters. The smock falls to his shins. Gliding between the worktables, he reminds me of a priest from an old-fashioned movie.
Some slow story about heartache and forgiveness. "Naming things helps you see them better," he says. I want to make art, not name colors. I push my sleeves up to my elbows. I got all excited when he passed around the brushes. He finally let us open up some paints. ("Watercolors, to start.") And now this is what we get to do? Mr.
G is the closest thing to a perfect teacher, but this time I have no idea what his game is. I sigh deep. There is nowhere else I''d rather be, but that doesn''t mean it''s a laugh a minute here. I dip my brush in primary blue and smear it onto my palette. I add a bit of white. I flatten the bristles and drag them in small circles. The brush is a dancer in a tutu. I lower my face so close to the paint that I swear I can smell the pigment.
My eyelashes almost touch the mix. When I transfer the color to the stiff creamy paper, droplets ball up and run to the edge. I dip my brush again, adding some red, then black, to the blue on my palette. I continue with different combinations, different amounts of color. Eventually I lift my head and manage to give three glistening blues a name. In other words, I try to follow the directions. Because that''s who I am. Blue number one : Swimming pool.
Blue number two : Denim jacket. Blue number three : First-prize ribbon. A new shade each time. I pencil the words under my three wet blotches. And then I get stuck. My mind goes to the razor-- and, come to think of it, that must be his toothpaste on Mom''s sink, too. I already know how to mix paints, but I''m definitely not saying that out loud. The truth is I draw and paint on my own.
Almost every night I read from Art Through the Ages , a ginormous white book with gold lettering on the cover. It was my mom''s in college. The best part is the Fun Fact section that pops up from chapter to chapter. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci made notes for himself backwards so he could keep his ideas private? The only way old Leo could decipher his own notes was to hold them up to a mirror. And back then mirrors weren''t easy to come by. The annoying thing about Art Through the Ages , though, is that in 535 pages only one woman gets featured: the artist Mary Cassatt, who painted mothers with their kids. Mr. Grunwald looks up at the ceiling and stares.
Then he nods slowly and focuses on each student. His eyes are sad and kind and patient, and I like that I see all those things in them. He stays on my face the longest. He knows I can draw. Maybe he can see I''ve been making art for twelve years, which is true if you count grabbing crayons from my brother, Eli, when I was a baby.