Thirty-six Shades of Green

Before there were computers, painting apps and Pixar to create amazing color cartoons, there were people. People who sat at desks and colored in the the backgrounds of movies like Snow White and Cinderella. In the early days of Disneyland, there was a studio of some of these artists at the park and you could stand on a moving sidewalk and glide past the studio, looking down at the people at work through huge sound proof glass walls. As I drifted by, I particularly noticed a woman whose job it was to paint green. We moved slowly enough that I was able to count her 36 little jars of green paint: so dark as to be almost black down to so light as to be almost white - and every possible variation of green in between. 

I thought of her a lot today, first as I started on this mandala knowing there would be shades of green involved. And then as I actually started, I was so excited with my idea for the colors that my first strokes were too fast and I messed up a little. What meticulous work she must have done, creating a real looking forest in cartoon form. She could never move too fast. The tips of the pine needles were yellow against the darker greens of the shadowy forest just like around my deck. So many shades of green. All applied with care and precision ~ and, unlike me and my mandala, she never saw the whole unless she went to the movie.