All summer, the brick wall beside the laundromat on Mill Street had been plain and gray. Then Ms. Perez, an artist who lived nearby, asked the neighborhood to help her paint a mural on it. The mural would show the river that ran through town, with fish, turtles, and birds.

Adrian signed up right away. On the first morning, Ms. Perez gave him a brush and pointed to a tall shape she had sketched in pencil. “This is a great blue heron,” she said. “It’s yours.”

Adrian hesitated. He had never painted anything bigger than a sheet of paper. What if he ruined it? Slowly, he dipped his brush into the blue-gray paint and began.

Up close, his heron looked terrible. The feathers were blotchy, and one leg was thicker than the other. Adrian put down his brush and frowned.

Ms. Perez walked over. “Come with me,” she said. She led him across the street, and they turned around to look.

From there, the blotches looked like soft, real feathers. The heron seemed to be standing in the water, about to catch a fish.

“Murals are made to be seen from far away,” Ms. Perez said. “Sometimes you have to step back to see what you’ve done.”

Adrian grinned. Then he hurried back across the street to fix the heron’s other leg.