Squashing for pigments!

It was a bright breezy morning, and Pixie was keen on doing some painting on such a lovely day. Pixie rummaged around for any spare paints and brushes, but to their dismay all the paints were dried up and unusable. Pixie frowned, and carefully stacked up the unusable paint into a pile. Pixie thought: “I wonder what I could use instead…” The sun was high up in the sky by the time Pixie decided to look for other substitutes for paint outside, and wandered around the colorful meadows for some vibrant flowers to use as paint. Pixie picked up a bright yellow dandelion and smiled to themselves thoughtfully; “This would be perfect! If only I could find something to paint on.” Pixie was startled by a sudden swarm of bumblebees and interrupted their train of thought. Swiftly, they ran into the forest to the safety of the heavy underbrush. Pixie was almost completely discouraged after the whole ordeal and was about to go home until they found a backpack left on the forest floor. Curious, Pixie picked up the bag and rummaged through its contents. To their delight, Pixie pulled out a worn out notebook with some empty pages. Cautiously, they looked around to make sure the bag was surely abandoned, and tore out a page to use for their painting. Pixie left the bag and its contents in a safe spot under the shade of a tree just in case the owner decided to retrieve their items.

The sun was slowly descending from behind the clouds and Pixie knew they had to act fast to preserve what little sunlight remained. Pixie used their paws to smush the dandelion into a paste, and used some water from a nearby stream to liquify the paste into a makeshift paint. Looking around, Pixie spotted a bush full of bright red cranberries and hopped over to collect some. With a handful of berries, it was then quickly smushed again into a paste and liquified to make a crimson shade of red. Pixie furred their brows in concentration, “Where would I get blue?” And as they were thinking, their eyes drifted towards a blue outcrop of crystals on a rock. “What luck!” Pixie exclaimed out loud before they gleefully pranced over to collect some samples for blue paint. Pixie brought over the crystal chunks and ground them into a powder using a pebble as a pestle. With the powder, they sprinkled some more water and it became the final paint that they needed. Delighted, Pixie used their paw to mix the paints into all the colors of the rainbow in order to create their masterpiece. Pixie placed the paper on a slate and precisely dabbed and traced shapes and lines with the makeshift paints. After a couple hours of tiresome work the piece was finished with only an hour of sunshine left to spare, Pixie held up their work to admire it. On the page was a crude yet distinct painting of Pixie gathering flowers in the meadow with various splotches of paint on their body. Pixie smiled and carefully blew on the paper to dry the paint a little more before scurrying off back to their home to display the painting on the wall.