lynati

It's been a long time since she painted. The tubes of paint, packed away in two small boxes are right where she left them, fourth drawer down in her bureau of craft supplies. (Well, one small box and one old-fashioned yellow “toiletries” case that had belonged to her mother, but it fits perfectly next to the box and so it doesn't matter that it no longer zips closed)

There's a lot of them, most of it from a full-dozen years ago. Some were from the original set assigned to her on the first day of high school, and a handful were a gift from her old classmate, Molly. (“I'm not going to need them where I'm going,” she'd explained with a bitter smile.) The rest were liberated from the art supply closet without guilt shortly before graduation. She'd had to pay for paint at the start of each of the four years she was in school, despite the fact she still had plenty of her original set to work from if needed. Acrylic was not her medium; she preferred pencils, ink, and graphite. But she'd had to pay a paint-specific lab fee, year after year, and she was damn well going to take what she was owed. For once.

Now, she wishes she'd been a little more careful in her selection, added more of the commonly-used basics instead of trying for an even pallet. There's plenty of umber and sienna, both burnt and raw, but only two Hooker's greens, and all three tubes of titanium white are squeezed flat. She takes the one that looks to have the most left in it and places it in a gallon ziploc bag, alongside a handful of brushes in assorted sizes. A green and a burnt umber follow, and she thinks, that is enough for the first day. There is no supply list for the class, and she doubts the teacher is going to get heavily into color theory on the first day- not for “intro to painting the human figure.” She can ask the teacher about what he wants for the following classes, and add to her bag of supplies accordingly.

From the top drawer she takes out a case of simple Crayola watercolors and a pristine pad of watercolor paper and adds them to the bag, in case the heaviness of the acrylic proves to be too intimidating.

Closing the drawer smoothly, she steps away. A glance down at the bag makes her hesitates. Shades of grey might prove a better way to go, for the first day, and while the tube of Mars Black she earlier bushed aside won't cut it alone, she knows there has to be a tube of Payne's Grey in there somewhere. She kneels again, and tugs the old wood open.

Rummaging through all the tubes isn't easy, and rummage she must as the grey paint isn't conveniently waiting for her in the top layers of the boxes as the other desired colors were. Plus, the drawer is sticking so she can't pull it all the way. Some of the tubes are so coated in phalo blue from a ruptured tubes that their names and color-coded strips are completely illegible; it doesn't matter. She can recognize the colors by unscrewing the caps and taking a look. (There was a time she could tell by smell alone.)

Annoyed, she removes the first box, and up-ends it. Almost half of it is hues of green, and she wonders how that happened. Maybe her high-school self had intended to paint a forest, or a field of grass. She'd been horrid with people back then, and had preferred still lives for most of her assignments. (Her old, once-beloved Prismacolor pencils are in the back of the drawer that is second-from-the-top of the old bureau.)

She finds the Payne's Grey at the bottom of the second box, and puts the remaining tubes away with little ceremony. Later she'll organize them, she promises herself, as she pulls the creaky studio door shut behind her.