Coromo, chapter 2, parts 616 - 619

616. This presented a riddle for him. It never entered his mind his art work could have  value, he was amazed that anyone would want it at all.  What confused him was that she would spend so much on the materials. There was only one explanation he could think of, remembering his French Landscape Painter's Easel, he reasoned that resort people had no concept of money, it didn't mean anything to them. The idea that he was painting masterpieces did not cross his mind.

617. He set to work that night on a series of paintings for his new client. The almost insurmountable task was to come up with a new idea for each painting. If he couldn't think of an idea he tried to paint the things he saw all around him. Like with his first paintings he was constantly aggravated with how difficult it was to draw even the most simple object and have it look right. He had to remind himself over and over that Ms. Tallulia did not seem to mind his mistakes.

618. His pictures of real things, drawn all out of proportion and crooked looking got on his nerves so much that he gradually switched over to making up things from his imagination. A boat in a storm tossed ocean, a lion scaring a man in the woods, a house on fire with someone on a ladder, an old man on a tricycle, anything that popped into his head.

619. Many of the colors in the tubes Tallulia sent him were especially strong and brilliant with strange names like Phthalo green, or Naphthol red. He could not resist the temptation to paint his images using these colors without any regard for actual life. Why not paint a tree gleaming Dioxazine purple, of Quinacridone pink, who cared, and besides, he had an intuitive feeling that if his paintings were outlandish in some way Ms. Tallulia would like them all the more.