Ladies On Shore Oil Painting.

When Alain got married, he ambitiously decided to recreate Frank Weston Benson’s famous painting Summer (1909), which features four elegant ladies on a shore with an island in the background. Seemed simple enough… especially if he conveniently removed one lady. Confident, he prepped a large canvas, carefully sketching a grid with pencil—just like on his printed reference—to map out the details with precision.

A brilliant plan… until he discovered one crucial problem: oil paint does not cover graphite. No matter how many layers he applied, those stubborn pencil lines kept resurfacing like ghosts of artistic miscalculation. A week of drying time? Nope, still there. More paint? Still there. It was like a bad omen he couldn’t erase.

Ironically, the painting—meant to be a masterpiece—ended up mirroring his marriage. Progress stalled, distractions piled up, and by the time he resumed, the inevitable was happening: the divorce his wife had been requesting for years was finally unfolding. So, covering up the pencil lines became more than an artistic challenge—it was an emotional one too.

To make matters worse, despite his best efforts, he could never quite capture the women's faces. No matter how many times he looked at the reference, they took on a life of their own. One mysteriously transformed into Dolores herself (whoever she was), another became a brunette, and somehow, a redhead showed up.

And to this day? The painting remains unfinished, unsatisfying, and absolutely stubborn. But hey, maybe some art is meant to be an ongoing journey.