Mona Lisa My Love

Chapter three

That entire next week, I felt like my whole world had ended. I thought about her endlessly, wishing I could see her again, with nowhere to turn and nothing to go on, but then I had an idea. I would paint her. Yes, I would paint Kitty. When I wasn't working over at Mr. Jensen's store, I would paint. I started to get excited about the idea of painting a portrait of Kitty.

I had painted in the past, but those paintings were from photos. This painting would be my first time from memory. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could still see Kitty. I started to believe that maybe, just maybe, I really could do this.

I was ten years old when I started painting. My mother and I would sit at the dining room table and paint for hours together. She was very talented and could draw exceptionally well especially faces. I was not very good but enjoyed spending the time with my mother. After a few years, we never painted again. Other things took its place, but it was always in the back of my mind. I suppose it's like a grown man playing with model trains as an adult. He might have played with them as a kid, and that little piece of him never grew up.

Shortly after Sis and I moved to the flat, I got a job at Mr. Jensen's store. It is a big hobby store; at least I had never seen one this big. Like most hobby shops, it had sections for models, woodworking, games, toys, rockets, and stuff like that, but the store also had a significant painting department. That is where I asked to be assigned. I started in the stocking department as all new employees did. It was only after the store manager overheard me talking to a customer about da Vinci and his paintings that I got assigned to the painting department. I had studied most of the famous painters, including da Vinci.

We had clearance sales every three or four months at the hobby store to move out anything that wasn't selling quickly enough in Mr. Jensen opinion. He never liked to waste shelf space on something that was not selling. One sale had those Paint By Number sets. I thought how cool it would be to paint one, so I bought several to try. I loved it, but they were not challenging enough for me. They did teach me how to mix colors and how to incorporate some techniques like blending paints and using different brushes, both wet and dry, and underpainting.

The process of painting has taught me how to look at things. I mean really look at things. Take a pine tree, for instance. Most people would say a pine tree is green. I would have agreed, but now I see that the pine tree consists of many colors. Trees may be black in the shaded areas, dark brown or black in the bark area, with light greens, dark greens, yellows, even whites or creams depending if the sun is shining or not. I learned a lot, and that told me I had so much more to learn.

I studied not only the techniques of painting but the art of observation as well. I began to observe people or things at a much subtler level than most people do. It was fun for me. I didn't have a lot of friends, and I stayed indoors away from people. I liked it that way.

I moved on from the Paint By Number sets to painting from a photograph which was more challenging and creative for me. I had painted about a dozen or so. The later ones came out all right, I guess. The people I painted for, said they looked great, and I would get lots of compliments, but I figured it was a painting of something or someone that they loved, so of course, they liked it. I never thought those paintings were that special or I was any good. I just enjoyed painting, and the later ones sold for money. It's always nice to do something that you love doing and get paid for it at the same time. That's what I think, anyway.

When I started to paint Kitty, it went amazingly fast. It became an obsession. I would get up in the morning and paint for a while, go to work, and then come home and paint until the wee hours, sleep some, and then get up and do it all over again. Sis became worried about my obsession but never said a word. She would make me stop to eat something and sometimes to have a conversation with her, but she could see how driven I was. I had to do this. I had to paint Kitty. If asked, I could not even have said why. It was not like I was ever going to see her again. I didn't even know her name.

For days after Kitty left, I would catch a ride to that periwinkle blue police station where I met her to see if, by chance, she was there. I knew she wouldn't be, but that's just something a love-sick boy does. But I never saw her. I even thought about going in and asking, big ol' friendly, what Kitty's name was, but then I would think, "Oh right, they are just going to tell me who she is and where I can find her." Even I knew better than that. I had settled on the fact I would never see her again, but at least I could paint her, I would have to console myself with that.

Little did I know how wrong I was.