With beanie hat in tow (with a pair of old tights tied on top) Thomasina (my Inner Woman) reappeared this week demanding another portrait be made. You can’t refuse such a request. Really, you can’t. I have tried.

Ripping the Mona Thomasina out of the frame, Thomasina said “We’ll use this again. And for the next three.” Which was her way of telling me she wanted another three portraits doing. “For this run!” she adds. See? Refusal is not an option.

This rip off version of a classic is based upon Girl with a Pearl Earring, an oil painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, dated around 1665. There is a movie of the same name, starring Colin Firth (as Vermeer, not the girl!), which wasn’t the inspiration for this picture, as I haven’t seen that movie. The painting wasn’t named as such when it was first done, but this is the name it currently holds.

As with last week’s painting, this week’s is slightly similar yet totally different once again to the original to which upon it is based. Thomasina is looking the wrong way for starters. She’s also wearing that hat and tights combo, and her earring most definitely isn’t pearl. It’s a clip-on one. And this painting isn’t done in oils.

Just so you’re forewarned… there is a nightmare of a painting coming up. I almost replaced this one with that one, just to get it out of the way… but I think best left until the very last minute is the wisest option. Honestly, it’s the stuff of nightmares. Once seen, it can never be unseen. But Thomasina likes it.

And what Thomasina likes… well. Wait and see.

I shall apologise now.

There will, however, be another ‘respectable’ painting along next week.

Thomasina, my Inner Woman, wanted her portrait painting the other day, so I had no choice but to oblige. In honour of Thomasina, my Inner Woman, being the kind of classic person everyone aspires to be like, the classics were the only place to go.

Everyone has heard of the Mona Lisa, the enigmatic and charming painting created centuries ago by Leonardo da Caprio, yes? Well, I present my version of that very painting, the Mona Thomasina.

Just like the original, she’s sat on a wooden chair on a bridge or terrace overlooking a jagged mountainous terrain, and you can’t tell if she’s smiling or not. With Thomasina, nobody ever can tell if she’s smiling or not, so she is the perfect model for this reconstruction.

Unlike the original, the chair is completely different, and Thomasina just wouldn’t get into the correct pose for love nor money. Mona Lisa’s clothes were far too old-fashioned and motheaten for a modern classic, so Thomasina argued, and she decided on this get up instead. And the mountains in the background are in a different place completely.

But still the resemblance is there, particularly if one squints, and tries to look through the painting as though one is trying to decipher a magic eye picture  just after they first came out in 1991; only with this thing it looks slightly better when blurred.

And before anyone writes in and complains, of course I know that it wasn’t Leonardo da Caprio who painted the Mona Lisa. It was Vinci. Vinci da Caprio. I do knows me art y’know. Mostly.