Clara’s Sea Colours

Clara takes her paints to the seaside with Dad. From their picnic table, she can see a wide strip of water. “It is not just blue,” she says.

She notices green near the shore and pale grey farther away. Clara puts blue and yellow on her tray. She hopes to find the green she can see.

Clara stirs quickly, then adds white and more blue. Soon all the colours run together. The paint on her tray is dull and grey. She stops mixing.

“That is not my green,” she says. Dad looks out to sea with her. “Where could that colour belong?” he asks. Clara looks at the distant water.

She paints a soft grey strip near the top of her paper. “Far away,” she says. The colour has found a place. Now she wants to try green again.

On a clean part of the tray, Clara puts a little yellow beside a little blue. She mixes just those two colours, watching as a green begins to appear.

Clara adds the green nearer the bottom of her picture. She leaves a thin strip of white paper between it and the grey. It looks like a glimmer of light.

A breeze ripples the real water. Clara makes a few short blue marks in her green. “Those are my little waves,” she says. Dad holds the paper steady.

They let the picture dry while they eat their lunch. Clara keeps looking between the sea and her painting. Neither one stays quite the same colour in the sunlight.

At home, Clara shows Dad her two patches of colour. “I nearly threw this grey away,” she says. “But my sea needed it too.” She hangs the picture by her bed.