I'm always in awe of visual artists... it's a skill that's just so far beyond me, I can't even comprehend it.

Last week, I found some sketches in a 19th century collection I'm working on that some man had made of his cousins, and they were just appallingly bad-- and strikingly like what one of my attempts of a portrait would have looked like-- so I was laughing at the correspondence where his cousins try very hard to complement his efforts. I'm sure they were thinking 'if that's what I look like, just shoot me' and 'we're not expected to actually display these anywhere, are we?'