I tell this story often, but it warrants mention here. One of the most eye-opening moments I had, looking at Picasso's later-period stuff, was this realization: whenever he renders each individual fingernail; he does so with intent. As in, when you plot them as though each fingernail were a point and the canvas a graph, they always form THE most pleasing contour. This tradition was inherited from the old old masters Michelangelo, Delacroix, Holst.