I have been painting for many years and the process still thrills me. My preferred material is oil paint, but I also use acrylics, water colors and wax, too. This is my first oil painting at age 8, December 1949. My teacher was an artist, Pauline Ward Mount, seen here in a photo I saved. She is one of my muses - a source of inspiration. She told I had a natural sense of color and she never tried to correct my work in any way. I remember the first art class was with a group of other kids and I was the youngest. I chose the Panda from a selection of toys and other objects in her studio. I squeezed four new tubes of Grumbacher paints onto a wooden palette - alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, plus white. Back then, tubes were heavier than they are now, full of things that weren't safe. The color black was made from a combination of alizarin and ultramarine and when mixed with white became purple. (It's still a lovely black, although I now use indigo with many other ready-made pigments.) I learned how to clean my brushes and carefully pour used turps into a 'slop jar' so none would go down the drain. Soon I was going to Mrs. Mount for private lessons...