Painting is an occupation which is within almost everybody's power, and of which one tires very slowly or perhaps not at all. By painting we mean coloring old pictures rather than making new ones, since making new ones—from nature or imagination—require separate gifts. On a wet afternoon—or, if it is permitted, on Sunday afternoon—coloring the pictures in a scrapbook is a very pleasant and useful employment. After dark, painting is not a very wise occupation, because, in an artificial light, colors cannot be properly distinguished.
All shops that sell artists' materials keep painting-books. But old illustrated papers do very well.
Flags
An even more interesting thing to do with a paint-box is to make a collection of the flags of all nations. And when those are all done, you will find colored pages of them in any large dictionary, and elsewhere too,—you might get possession of an old shipping guide, and copy Lloyd's signal code from it.
Maps
Coloring maps is interesting, but is more difficult than you might perhaps think, owing to the skill required in laying an even surface of paint on an irregular space. The middle of the country does not cause much trouble, but when it comes to the jagged frontier line the brush has to be very carefully handled. To wet the whole map with a wet brush at the outset is a help. Perhaps before starting in earnest on a map it would be best to practice a little with irregular-shaped spaces on another piece of paper.
Magic-Lantern Slides
If you have a magic lantern in the house you can paint some home-made slides. The colors should be as gay as possible. The best home-made slides are those which illustrate a home-made story; and the fact that you cannot draw or paint really well should not discourage you at all. A simpler way of making slides is to hold the glass over a candle until one side is covered with lamp black and then with a sharp stick to draw outline pictures on it.
Another way is to cut out silhouettes in black paper, or colored tracing-paper, and stick them to the glass. In copying a picture on a slide put the glass over the picture and draw the outline with a fine brush dipped in Indian ink. Then paint. All painting on slides should be covered with fixing varnish, or it will rub off.