Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
We Are Who We Pretend to Be
Didn’t you used to be a serious person?
What? That’s an odd and slightly hostile question.
Oh, don’t mean to be hostile, love, just wondering what’s up with all the coloring.
Love? Are you a Brit or just stuck in Britbox?
I watch a lot of Vera, I admit. But never mind, what about the coloring?
I like it. It’s very calming. Not that I need to be calmed but you know what I mean.
Not really. Let’s go back to the first question – didn’t you used to be a serious person?
Why do I think you’re using my coloring as evidence of diminished capacity?
Let me be frank. Adults generally don’t spend time coloring. Children do that. Adults do useful things like learning foreign languages or finishing the New York Times Sunday Crossword.
Who sent you here?
A lot of people are wondering if this is the Jan they used to know or has she, you could say, become a shadow of her former self?
Do they know I have erasable colored pencils? That’s probably ammunition for the shadow train of thought.
This is just a polite inquiry, love. Don’t take offense.
If I’m found to be coloring all day every day, what will happen? Will somebody come to the door and ask me to take a ride in a van? After I put my slippers on?
We haven’t gotten that far. We’re just checking at this point, love. It’s nothing nefarious. Trust me.
You’ve kind of upped your ‘loves’ as we’ve talked. Does that mean you like me more? Or am I seeming hard to handle?
Neither, love. We just want to be ready.
I see. I’m thinking of buying better colored pencils. More colors, hues, shades. And not erasable. Like the box of 64 Crayola crayons that I got for Christmas as a kid. A lot of people will envy me. That’s what’s next, love.
_________
Image from “When Old Dames Get Together and Other Confessions of a Ripe Old Age,” poems by Judy Dykstra-Brown and illustrations to color by Isidro Xilonzonchitl
8 Comments on “We Are Who We Pretend to Be”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
We are remaking ourselves, at least I am, as a retired person. No one I meet here knows what I have done, or what I would like to share, and could care less. It’s like all you really can do is be, come what may. And free… sounds like a song.
I highly recommend both better erasers AND better colored pencils. If you need recommendations, I have lots of them all based on personal experience. Crappy pencils give you crappy art.
Yes – recommendations welcome!
You want to get small erasers — they are inexpensive and you can hold them like pens. I bought five of them for like $11.00 on Amazon and I haven’t finished using two of them yet. The only reason it’s two is I managed to lose one — it rolled under some piece of furniture. It’s the “Pentel Clic Eraser, Retractable Eraser Pen Style Grip with 3 Refills”. Erasers are good for SO MANY things. Never go anywhere without one.
Castle makes good art pencils. Not as expensive as Prismacolor, but high quality. Huge sets from China sound great, but aren’t. The colors fade AND the pencil is printed in Chinese ONLY. Both Prismacolor and Castle have sales,. Sometimes you can get an otherwise expensive set for very little money. I snagged a few sets that way.
Enjoy exploring the art section of Amazon. It’s huge. Don’t buy “unnamed” pencil sets. I had a the most fun buying small sets in artist’s colors mostly from Castle and Prismacolor. I have a Gauguin set, a Van Gogh set, a Rembrandt set plus two “portrait” sets which have a lot of skin tones — each was less than $15 and a couple were just a few dollars.
You’ll figure out what else you need as you play with your sets. I finally gave in and got a small electric sharpener that I love, though I have to be careful or it eats too much pencil. “Tihoo Electric Pencil Sharpener for Colored Pencils, Battery Operated” because it sharpens both regular and round pencils in two sizes. The manual sharpener “Carl Angel-5 Manual Pencil Sharpener” is great but doesn’t work on round pencils.
I used Prismacolor pencils and markers during my design career.
I keep a box of 120 Crayola crayons in my studio. I started with them in kindergarten, they unlocked my creative potential back then and they’re still cool.
Oh I do enjoy Vera. Excellent woman. Like you Jan: you just keep on colouring – if you find it enjoyable or relaxing, go for it.
I’ve always loved to color and do so in spurts! Then I send my colored pages off to family members, so they all know I crazy. My sister loves to color too! Your are work is wonderful! And so is this piece of writing.
Yup! Vera. Colored pencils… YAY!