My daughter Emily attended the funeral of a classmate’s dad this week. It was a sad day for everyone in our community. I came home early that day. I think making art is cathartic, so when she asked me if we could paint something, I agreed. I’ve had a bag of watercolor supplies tucked under my desk for more than a year, so we got them out.

What should we paint? She asked. After discussing some options, we settled on using a weird and silly photo we found on my iPad. It was a portrait of us both, digitally manipulated by some app to give us a surreal expression. Perfect! I thought. It’s distorted already, so it won’t matter if our proportions are incorrect.

This is what we came up with.