My mother is an amateur artist and 1. a great art enthusiast. Her favorite artists are Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. If you have seen any works by them, you’ll know that people in their paintings are not portrayed realistically and some parts of their bodies are completely 2. out of proportion. In Picasso’s paintings, there is just something odd about the person’s face but you 3. can’t put your finger on what it is. We know that these things didn’t happen 4. by mistake, but still we wonder what the reason is. Is it the artist’s way of 5. drawing our eye to a detail or does he just want things to be 6. out of order so that we are disturbed and forced to think about the painting? I was apprehensive when I heard that my mother was planning to paint a portrait of me and my fiancé as a wedding gift. 7. Yet there is something about the idea of having your picture painted instead of just being photographed. Would she do something odd, like paint my thumb 8. on the wrong side of my hand? In the end, it turned out great — one nose and two eyes per person, and the thumbs all in the right places.