It started slow, but by the middle of the week, he had hit his old stride. The foreman in his mind called out the brush strokes like a quarterback calling out plays in a huddle. Shane’s hand obeyed diligently, and the paintings sprang quickly to life. The corkboard under the Escher quote had been cleared of the reference material from the matte painting and refilled with printouts of surfers and scuba divers, water skiers and sunlit beaches. By Thursday, Shane had nearly finished the first painting in the series, ending with a large representation of a woman in a white bikini leaning against a surfboard stuck upright in the sand. He’d printed the reference photo for this picture from an image he’d found on the Internet. In the reference photo, the woman was wearing jean shorts and a yellow tube top, and she was leaning against a Coke machine instead of a surfboard. She was laughing, holding a cigarette in her right hand. Shane had found the image on a photo sharing website called Flickr, and even though all the minor details were wrong, the woman in the photo had the perfect pose and expression.
