Of course, I follow the advice I’ve gleaned from months on the Forum, and I trace the design basics with my watercolor pencil on trace paper, wet the skin with alcohol spray and rub it to remove the excess wetness before pressing the design to the girl’s skin. I press firmly, then carefully peel it away and there’s ... nothing. Actually, it’s worse than nothing, it’s a few smudgy partial lines, and the rest is nothing. Damn, I think, and try not to frown. The wind is ruffling my hair and making my fingers stiff and cold. I decide against trying the trace again, it will only smear worse and I don’t want to look like an idiot having to retrace the design. Instead, I decide to follow the few bits that made it and just go for it. I work slowly, and try to get the girl talking to help fill the silence. The design comes out alright, although the symmetry isn’t perfect, and I knock $5 off the quoted price because of it. The girl, however, isn’t fazed a bit and seems pleased with her bargain as well as her design.

During the time it takes to paint her, we chat and find out she’s a theatre student from Santa Fe and we launch into a long and involved talk about theatre (my other favorite subject besides henna). As always, working on her starts to draw a crowd and I can hear Rebecca chatting with a few passersby who stop to take a look. Rebecca is a fantastic “apprentice,” I met her at one of my library demonstrations last fall and since then she’s been bitten by the henna bug and loves it well. She speaks to the crowd knowledgeably about henna, how long it lasts, what colors it comes in, how it works – all the typical questions that come up – and I’m thankful to have her there so I can focus on my work instead of trying to answer questions and paint at the same time.

A friend of the Celtic girl joins her halfway through the design and picks one for herself next, explaining it’s her birthday today and she’s feeling like a little impulse-buy splurge. She wants a CCJ Gothic design done on the small of her back, and I set up the ground mat and beach towel for her, ready to straddle her à la CCJ’s Ozzfest advice for working on that area of the body.

Again, I trace the design because I want the symmetry to come out perfect, making sure to press hard and get plenty of pencil on to the trace paper. I wet her back, press the trace paper down, and peel it back to ... nothing, and this time I mean really nothing. Grrrrrr, I grumble to myself in my head, and figure OK, screw the trace. Her design takes all of about 15 minutes to complete, if that, and by the end of just that one I can feel my thighs burning. In my mind, I think about CCJ and can’t imagine straddling the “gurlz” for days on end like she did – after just one I’m already a little stiff getting up. On the good side, it’s warmer on the grass than it is at the table, so she’s perfectly happy to bask for a while until her henna is dry. The design, although again not perfect, is passable. Rebecca tells me later that I’m being ridiculously picky and perfectionist, and that she thought it looked perfect anyhow. I agree that I’m perfectionist about the work I do, and that I’m my own worst critic.