Who Taught You to Paint?

“Who taught you to paint?” is technically a trick question, because funny enough you may not have the same answer to two seemingly similar questions: “Who is the first person who allowed you to paint?” or “Who is the first person who expected you to know how to paint?”

I was sixteen, my sister was fourteen, and my dad picked the hottest June day to paint our two-car garage. Neither one of us had ever held a paintbrush and had no clue how to paint. I think Dawn and I were allowed to paint for fifteen minutes before my dad became aggravated and told us to go swimming or go shopping, or go do anything else besides try to help.

We were painting the wrong way: Putting too much paint on the brush, not coating the boards evenly, not putting enough paint on the brush, not paying attention to what we were doing. We could not paint to save our souls, based on the one minute of intensive instruction we had received just moments before our first attempts.

My second attempt at painting was more than ten years later. I started small by painting our first apartment’s guest bathroom, to draw the observant eye away from the hideous plastic tiles that covered eighty percent of the room. There was so little wall space I used a paintbrush to cover the entire room, and never had the opportunity to use a roller.

Jim’s introduction to painting was similar to mine, with less instruction. His dad handed him a roller and can of paint right around his eighteenth birthday, walked Jim into a bedroom and said, “Paint this.”

Jim remembers being taught how to paint correctly by our friend Bob, who had helped us install a decorative window in our townhouse. Bob showed Jim the correct way to “cut in” or apply paint where the walls meet the ceiling, the proper way to hold paintbrushes and paint rollers, the best way to apply different types of paints, and the importance of quality paintbrushes and PATIENCE.

As Bob was a professional carpenter and painter, he had such a steady hand from years of practice that he never taped-off wooden trim or where the ceiling and the walls met, and encouraged Jim to paint the same way. And once Jim was taught to paint as a professional more than twenty years ago, we have both loved to paint ever since.

I wanted to paint Jamie’s room solo today, but Jordan kept asking if she could help. I knew it would end up taking me twice as long, and I really wanted to get around to painting both the walls and the ceiling in one day, AND get the first coat of paint on the kids’ bathroom walls.

Jordan watched intently and waited patiently while I cut-in and painted the first big wall. I explained every single step I took and why the wall color wasn’t matching from section to section as the paint dried.

I then loaded the paint roller and handed it carefully to Jordan, reminding her to paint the letter “W” and then fill in the spaces with nice even strokes. As the room had only been painted two years ago, one coat would thankfully do the trick, and Jordan’s even paint strokes were quickly transforming the boring beige and baby blue walls to a more tween, dude appropriate Porpoise Grey.

Jordan helped me paint two entire walls, leaving the last full wall for her brother to finish. Before arming him with a roller, Jamie watched how Jordan painted, and Jordan then stayed on to offer pointers.

One coat of paint, two children, a half-gallon of Porpoise Grey and six hours later, Jamie’s room looked fabulous. While I’ll probably wake up early tomorrow morning and bang out the ceiling by myself, it made me smile to hear Jordan and Jamie proudly telling their friends that they painted Jamie’s room.

Next stop, the art of the shovel and digging out dead shrubs once Mom is done painting.