"se me hace"..?
 

I have the following sentence:



"Iba a pintar algo que se parezca a esta pintura del siglo dieciocho, pero se me hace muy difícil pintar".


(And here's a picture form for extra context)


I get that the second part of the sentence is basically saying "but it was too difficult to paint", but I can't wrap my head around what's going on with the structure here. I would've expected something like "pero era muy difícil pintar" or something similar.

The second part of the sentence appears to be an example of the no fault "se" construction (also called the unplanned "se" construction or the accidental "se" construction).

This construction consists of a pronominal verb plus an additional object pronoun that refers to a person. Using this construction implies that the person identified by the additional object pronoun was affected by the action of the verb, but is either not at fault for causing the event OR did not deliberately cause the event.

For example: "I lost the book" can be translated in at least two different ways:
a. Perdí el libro = I lost the book (possibly as a result of something I did or failed to do)
b. Se me perdió el libro = The book got lost on me (accidentally)

Similarly: I dropped the glass:
c. Dejé caer el vaso = I dropped the glass (deliberately or because I chose not to be careful enough)
d. Se me cayó el vaso = The glass fell on me (accidentally)

Some other threads in the forums discuss this type of construction. For example: http://forums.tomisimo.org/showthrea...ighlight=fault

additionally, a direct translation would be, it becomes (became) very difficult for me to paint.
These se me da, se me hace, se me olvida usages are much more common in Spanish than in English. I believe this is especially true with the verb olvidar.