Chapter 1. Once upon a time Francis and Clare wandered into a gallery and saw a painting of the local marble quarry. While they were deciding whether or not to purchase the piece it was sold to someone else. They knew it was just what they were looking for so they contacted the artist, Tom, and commissioned him to do one for them. Tom had painted the quarry a few times before and was happy to do so again, but this time it was a little different. When he paints something for himself he can take a bit of artistic license. If the trees are shorter or the figures larger than in nature who's going to know or care? But when he is commissioned to paint something he views it as a collaboration. Francis and Clare knew the scene well and wanted the painting to be a fair representation of it. It was, therefore, important to him to find the view that best represented the quarry and to make the proportions reasonably accurate. He had been to their house and measured the space where the painting would hang so he knew the dimensions of the new piece. So one sunny afternoon, when Tom knew there would be lots of activity at the quarry, he made some compositional drawings and sketches of some of the characters on the scene. When he got back to his studio he made another drawing to the exact proportions he wanted for his painting, then squared it to transfer accurately to his canvas.....