#3 Splash of Colour

While Oscar was umming and ahhing over paints, he had apparently been joined by a ghost. And he very nearly dropped his chosen paints when he turned around and registered that fact.

“Hello there,” he offered a quiet hello once he had overcome his shock (and saved his paints). He didn’t want to interrupt the lady from whatever she was doing (did ghosts write letters to their ghosty friends?), but his Mamma had raised a boy with manners so he was unwilling to completely blank the lady just because she was dead.

That done, he moved his chosen supplies over to a table a bit away from the ghost but where he would still get plenty of light.

Paint, brushes, and water cup all set up how he wanted them, Oscar took his robe off and rolled his shirt sleeves up to get started.

And then he sat and stared at the blank canvas for a long time as he considered just where to start. How much did the canvas being charmed affect what he put on it? It was supposed to move later, so how did he account for that in his painting? He knew his Nonna had told him some, but not the proper details and it was so long ago anyway…

It suddenly seemed to dawn on Oscar how big a task he had decided to take on. But if it were to be his only chance to create a moving painting then he would have to give it a try or he would always regret it.

That decided, Oscar began to sketch out the general shape of how he wanted things.

How much did he want the lake to cover? Not the whole thing because that seemed like too much blue, so if he put the shore along that bit - he sketched out the border - then he could have the forest in the distance. Some lake greenery would go down the bottom and along the sides at front to frame it a bit - maybe he could add a few tiny little insect details when he was painting.

And then the central focus of the whole thing - the Giant Squid. If he painted the tentacles breaking the water, with just the smallest hints of a body below the waves, then even if the magic of the canvas did not work how he expected it to, he would still hopefully have enough of the Squid dancing about.

That should do it.

Pleased with his general plan, Oscar finally broke into his paint and began to put colour to the canvas.

Various shades of blue took up the main body of the work still, it was still a lake under the bright sunshine after all. But greens were quickly added with little lake plants and leaves.

Bits of brown, both light and dark, appeared in the far background for the forest and the lake shore. With a tiny white figure of what appeared to be a unicorn on the forest edge, its head dipped down to drink from the lake.

Oscar had seen no such thing, but it was still a fun little detail. The painting was for kids anyway, so he hoped they would enjoy spotting it.

He would have added a Fire-Belly Gecko in the far background and really tied his day together, but he worried about how far the magic would stretch. He did not want to scare any kids if the painted gecko’s set fire to the painted forest.

No, the only shades of red that he wanted were for the Squid. Something that rather helped it to stand out amongst the water, as the tentacles that he had painted stretched up towards the sun.

A few tiny insects were dotted about among the greenery that he had bordering the bottom, giving his painted lake that extra bit of life that he recalled.

Finally, after who knew how long, he set his current paintbrush in the water and sat back as he stretched out his wrist.

He was done. And he was happy with it.

Sat back in his chair, Oscar allowed the painting to dry for a bit while he relaxed. He’d had a long afternoon though, so he thought he rather deserved the chance to just sit quietly for the moment.

Eventually his rumbling stomach informed him that he should get a move on. So he pulled out his wand and tapped the painting as he had been told to, to activate the charms that made it move. He hoped that it worked with what he had painted.