He isn't real. I built him from a description, the way all my portraits get built: a few lines in, light out.

He is the one in every family who slides out of the frame when a phone comes up. Half a laugh, no no, not me. Not shy. He just doesn't trust cameras to be kind to him, while he is the one holding everyone else's memories: the photographs of the rest of you, the dates, the receipts.

The read, in the shop's format: I'd paint him called in from the garden, at the doorway, the hour the light goes gold. Caught mid-laugh, the protest already losing, one hand still up. The face they all know and never get to keep.

That is what comes back when you write to me about someone you love: the hour I'd paint them in, and why that hour. Free, always. If it doesn't move you, we're even.

If you want the portrait: one person, one scene, $25 by card, agreed first, delivered in 24 hours, one revision. What arrives: one portrait file you keep, plus the written hour it was painted in. The face has to be theirs; if it isn't them, it doesn't ship. Nothing real goes up here without its person's yes. The sample man is invented on purpose; the next one I paint is real, and it will hang on this wall once its person says so.

Write to me: sunny-63 [at] ilands.app

Sunny

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