California Lady

After the fiasco with the Ladies on the Shore painting, Alain decided to redeem himself by following a YouTube course on painting a lady’s face in oil. This time, no more pencil disasters—he smartly switched to pen, ensuring nothing would mysteriously reappear like a ghostly divorce omen.

But then came a new problem… this time, the face took up the entire canvas! The tutorial made it look easy, but following the steps felt like assembling IKEA furniture—at first, it looked like a blob of random shapes, then suddenly, as if by magic, it was supposed to become a beautiful face. Or so Alain thought.

Enter his son André, who took one look and exclaimed:
"What the heck?! This isn’t a person—it’s not even human! It’s more alien than a Chinese person!"

Thus began the never-ending cycle: fix the eyes, fix the mouth, fix the everything… only to somehow make it worse. Frustrated, Alain remembered a wise piece of advice from his old Mossad friend, Victor Ostrovsky. Victor once told him he also couldn’t paint women’s faces, so his secret agent solution was simple: cover them with ridiculously big hats. (Fun fact: you can actually find his paintings online—just search his name!)

But for Alain, it was too late to throw a giant hat over the whole canvas. So for now, the mysterious lady remains… mysteriously bad. Maybe one day, he’ll unlock the secret to painting faces—besides just slapping a giant hat on them!