Painter

Although the popular phrase has nothing to do with actual paint, there’s only one profession that allows you to literally “paint the town red” — or blue or yellow or hot pink, for that matter. And that profession is Painter.

While crayons typically come in boxes of eight, 16, 24 or 64, paint comes in hundreds of shades, hues, tints and tones. When you’re a Painter, therefore, you have one of the country’s most colorful jobs.

What that job is, exactly, depends on what kind of Painter you are: an Artist, for instance, or a Craftsman?

If you’re an Artist, you use acrylic, oil or watercolor paints to create compositions in the form of painted canvases, murals and 3-D objects. Your work — which might include painted abstractions, landscapes, portraits or still life scenes — often is displayed in museums and galleries, then sold to private citizens, some of whom commission their own custom paintings.

If you’re a Craftsman, on the other hand, you use oil- and water-based paints to paint the interiors and exteriors of buildings, including residential, commercial and industrial structures. Using brushes, rollers, sprayers and sponges, your goal isn’t creativity; it’s utility. In addition to painting, therefore, you also do varnishing, staining and drywall repair, not to mention wallpaper hanging and removal.

No matter what you paint, where you paint it or why, your job requires an intimate knowledge of color and technique, as the best painting — artistic or utilitarian — is at once eye pleasing and precise. Kind of like a pair of handsome Painters’ pants.