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Spider's Trick |
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 Grandmother
sat on the shoreline. She had a pad of paper and a pencil on her lap.
She was drawing a picture of Heron. Grandson sat beside her, watching as the drawing flowed from the end of the pencil, like magic. He watched her eyes as they darted back and forth from the scene to the paper. The image of Heron appeared on the paper like a bird emerging from the fog. At first Grandson could not tell what it was, but when the drawing was finished, it was so real he expected to see Heron move. Grandmother tore it off the pad, folded it up, and put it in her pocket. Grandson asked, “Why did you fold up your drawing? Aren't you going to hang it up on your wall when you get back home?” Grandmother chuckled and said, “No, I was just practising.” Grandson said, “I wish I could draw like you. When I finish a picture, people still can't tell what animal I was trying to do.” Grandmother said, “That's what all my drawings used to look like too. Then, one day I was sitting trying to draw a picture of Spider's web. I kept getting the lines all crooked. “I said to Spider, 'How do you get all your lines so even when you make your web?' “Spider said, 'It took a long time but I kept trying and finally I had an idea. If I held out one leg, I could use it to measure how far I was from my last line. Then it was easy to keep my lines the same distance apart. So I tried the same thing on my picture, using my finger to measure the distance between my lines. It worked like a charm.’” Grandmother said to Grandson, “I realized that if I wanted to learn how to draw really well I'd have to keep practising, just like I was doing today. Every time I do a drawing, I learn another trick that helps make my next drawing even better.” Grandmother passed the pad and pencil to Grandson and said, “If you want to learn how to draw well, then practise every chance you get.” Sample story from: Grizzly's Home and Other Northwest Coast Children's Stories Copyright 2005 Robert James Challenger ISBN 1-894384-94-6 |
