Jeremy Owl sat in his painting studio, wondering what to paint. "I haven't a clue!" he said. He thought he might take a nature walk to help him get ideas.

Just then, he noticed some animal friends in his doorway. It was Zoe, Phoebe, Juliette, and Max! They told him their idea: they wanted to have a painting show in the Lodge. They wondered if he could help them make paintings. 

Jeremy thought that his friends' idea was splendid! 

He had some plain canvases they could use for their paintings. 

"But first," he said, "we must paint the canvases with gesso." Gesso is a kind of white paint that makes the surface more smooth and beautiful for paintings. The friends painted it on with a big brush. 

*You don't have to do this part if you don't want to, but it really does make the surface nicer. If you don't want to buy gesso specially, you could use any white acrylic paint or water-based house paint. 

While the friends waited for their canvases to dry, they looked at some of Jeremy's favorite paintings to get ideas. Zoe especially liked this painting of flowers by Georgia O'Keeffe.

She tried to blend the colors smoothly within the flowers, leaves, and background.

Jeremy loved this painting of people picking flowers by Mary Cassatt.

He tried to paint a meadow of flowers with Juliette and Nicholas picking flowers in it. It wasn't going so well. "It just looks like a big green mess," he said. "This is not my day!" He turned his attention to helping his friends.

As soon as Max saw this painting of colorful stripes by Mark Rothko, he knew he wanted to make a painting like that. 

Here he is, working on it. He said the hardest part was mixing up the colors to be just right.

Juliette loved these paintings of scary monsters by Hieronymus Bosch.

She painted a monster that was part pig, part dragonfly, part lizard, and part cow. Also it had fangs. How eerie!

Phoebe loved this still life by Fernando Botero. A still life is a picture of objects, arranged together in a beautiful way.

Here she is making her own version of this painting. She's doing such a nice job!

After Jeremy had a little break, he realized that maybe the meadow and trees didn't have to be green. He painted the meadow a golden color, and he painted the sky light blue. The trees were still there, but only a little bit. After that, it was easy to paint in the flowers and the animals.

Once all the paintings dried, the animals hung them up in the lodge. Then they invited all their friends to their art show!