Do ya know what it is yet?

Nope! No, really, I don't! I was standing right behind him looking at what he was looking at and it bore absolutely no resemblance to what he was painting.

To be fair, though, on my way back I did realise it did look a bit like a completely different beach on the other side of the town. So he either had really staggeringly good eyesight or just fancied painting (from memory) somewhere with more passers-by. Trouble with that is that I suspect the passers-by were all thinking what I was thinking in paragraph 1.

By the way, just in case you were worried, "the distance" seems to have been put back where it belongs.