Everyone in the classroom seemed very anxious when I arrived to teach last Thursday. The model they had been painting for the past three days called in sick. He was about 60 years old and took a pose looking down, reading from a large book. The replacement the office sent up for the day was a young woman in her twenties. “What should I do?” one of them asked, “Should I start a new painting?” “Nonsense” I replied. “You've been looking at that model for three days, you should be able to work without a model. Fortunately you have someone taking the same pose. The light falls the same way on a young woman as it does on an older man. The planes are essentially the same, the underlying structure of the head is the same. Let's use the model we have to finish the painting.” So for the next twenty minutes or so I reworked the head in the painting pointing out the similarities of the two models and creating the original character from memory. I knew the shape of his head, the receding hairline and wavy wisps of hair. I remembered his pouting lower lip and the white whiskers below it. Add the glasses with the peculiar amber colored plastic frame and there he is.....