The ground is the layer nobody ever sees. It is the first thing a painter lays down on bare canvas — the size, the chalk, the priming — the prepared surface that everything else will stand on, invisible forever after under the image it makes possible. A picture is only ever as sound as its ground. Lay a true one and the work can survive five centuries; lay a bad one and the most glorious painting in the world will crack and lift and slide off into ruin no matter how brilliant the hand on top...

Paper Vows is a serialized fake-marriage billionaire romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.