Impurity

I try not to lean too heavy on my art background for story inspiration, but once in a while an artist character slips in. I am in the midst of revising the story, "Get Your Head in the Game", for the collection.

My spacey artist character ponders on the nature of light and paint in this excerpt from the story:

As I trudged to the dumpster, I started thinking about that photo and its light. I wished I could paint like that. Photographers had it easy – if they wanted a colour they'd just point and shoot. Sure, they had to find it first, but how hard is that? When I wanted to replicate the fresh hue of a spring leaf, I had to squirt from three different tubes, mix in my water, test it, add more yellow, a touch of emerald, maybe even a dab of Chinese White (if I’m just not catching the colour) and then finally with a soft supple stroke, lay it across the grain of the paper. That’s what really gets me: the impurity of pigment. No matter how they tried (or how high they jacked the price), they’d never figured out how to put light in a tube.

This expression comes out of a honest desire to be able to purchase new "light in a tube" by Winsor Newton. You think they'd be able to figure that out.

Have a great weekend.