A Beautiful Painting

• Brianna Fielding, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2019

Can you hear the soft strokes of the paintbrush spin and glide across the white canvas? Can you imagine the beautiful scene the brush is painting? Can you see the bright and dark colours slashed across the page to create a stunning artwork?
You watch as the artist carefully dips the bronze tip of the brush into the depths of the peacock blue paint before they skim the blank canvas to create a dramatic, dark sky. The artist selects another brush which they dip into a lighter blue, and carefully streaks the dark sky with flecks of cyan.
A new brush, the tip sleek and black, is dipped slowly into pure white paint and then is flicked across the canvas, dotting the beautiful sky with stars. Shamrock green is patiently layered to create a sloping, neat lawn below. Yellow and purple flowers are painted here and there, brightening up the green grass.
Then the artist dips a cream and gold brush into a pot of shiny black paint. She squints as she brushes the tip of the brush ever so lightly against where the blue and green meet on the canvas. She paints the silhouette of a woman and man holding hands, gazing up at the starlight. After some thought, she adds a sparkling moon in the top right corner, shining down on the couple.
The artist pauses here, her brown eyes admiring her work as her lips curve into a smile. Her shiny brunette hair catches the light as she turns to get new paint, her fingers searching for the perfect colour. She’s wearing a pale pink sweater and a pair of jeans splattered with different colours of paint. Her head bops to music playing through her earphones, and when her face turns slightly in your direction, you can see a smudge of blue paint on her nose.
She continues to paint with the black paint and carefully creates the small hands of the man and woman, and the curly waves of the woman’s hair. She paints the woman’s hand, the one that isn’t holding the man’s, so that she is pointing up at the twinkling stars. She adds small effects to the bottom of the woman’s dress, so that it looks like it is rippling in a light breeze.
The artwork looks complete. You can imagine it – a couple, a man and woman, holding hands as they smile up at the stars, standing on a green meadow and staring up at the beautiful night’s sky.
The woman points up at the stars, probably to point out the one that sparkles the most, and the man would smile.
The artist finally picks up her final brush. She dips it into turquoise paint and signs her signature in the bottom right corner of the painting. An intricate E within a V. She smiles at her work and then calls for the painting to be collected. You watch as it is carefully packaged and taken away.
A beautiful painting.