Beezus and Ramona - Beverly Cleary [9]
Instead, Miss Robbins said, “Celia, your picture is work to be proud of. It is a difficult thing to get to be as free as this.”
Then Miss Robbins moved on to Beezus, her long earrings swinging forward as she leaned over the drawing board. Beezus waited anxiously. Maybe her picture wasn’t so good, after all. If Miss Robbins liked a gray line winding around a lot of purple dots, maybe she wouldn’t like a flying horse. Maybe she liked things with no special shape, like those earrings.
“You have a good sky even if it is a little wet,” said Miss Robbins.
Beezus was disappointed. Anybody could have a good sky.
Miss Robbins continued to study the picture. “Try to think how a horse would look if it were really flying.”
Beezus tried to think.
“What about the tail?” asked Miss Robbins. “Wouldn’t the tail fly out behind instead of hanging down?”
“Especially if the wind blew real hard,” said Wayne.
“Can’t you make the horse look rounder?” asked Miss Robbins. “Think how a horse looks with the sun shining on him. Part of him would be in shadow.”
“Not that horse,” said Wayne. “She just copied it off a Mobilgas billboard, only she made it green instead of red.”
“I did not!” said Beezus indignantly. Then she stared at her painting again. Now that Wayne pointed it out, she could see her horse did look like the one on the Mobilgas billboard at the service station where her father bought gasoline. He was a flat cardboard horse, not a magnificent horse at all. Her horse wasn’t even as good as the horse on the billboard, because instead of a flying tail he had a tail that hung down like…well, like a mop.
“All right, Wayne,” said Miss Robbins.
“I’m sure Beezus did not mean to copy anything from a billboard.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Beezus mournfully. “I was only trying to change a real animal around to make it imaginary, but I just don’t have imagination, is all.”
“Why, Beezus, of course you have imagination!”
Miss Robbins sounded shocked at the idea of anyone’s not having imagination.
“My little sister has lots of imagination,” said Beezus. “Everybody says so.”
Miss Robbins smiled reassuringly. “That doesn’t mean that you don’t have any. I think your trouble is that you work too hard. You don’t have to be so neat. Why don’t you start another painting and just try to have a good time with your paints?”
Beezus looked uncertain. It was a nice change to have a grown-up tell her she didn’t have to be neat, but she didn’t understand how she could paint a good picture unless she worked at it. If only she had some imagination, like Ramona—but no, Miss Robbins said everybody had imagination. Well, if she had imagination, where was it? Why wasn’t it helping her with her imaginary animal? All she could think of was that cardboard horse on the billboard.
Beezus glanced at Ramona, who had been surprisingly quiet for a long time, to see how she was coming along with her picture of Ralph. Except for the stripe of sky at the top, Ramona’s paper was blank. Now she dipped her brush in yellow paint, divided the hairs of the brush into three tufts, and pressed them on the paper, leaving a mark like the track of a bird.
“That’s not the way to use a paint brush,” said Beezus. “Besides, you’re getting paint on your fingers.”
“Look—Ralph’s feet marks,” exclaimed Ramona, paying no attention to Beezus.
“You mean footprints,” corrected Beezus.
“Now go on and paint the rest of Ralph.”
“Feet marks,” said Ramona stubbornly, making more footprints across the paper.
“And I can’t paint him, because he’s just pretend.”
Oh, well, thought Beezus, maybe making footprints isn’t good for the brush, but it keeps her quiet. She dabbled her own brush in green paint and tried to stir up her imagination. She felt a little encouraged