Today’s portrait is of a friend of my wife’s, Kelly, who’s son was good friends with our son since about pre-school. I decided to do today’s piece in a pastel style that I used to do quite a bit of back when I was first starting out (but gave up on due to the problems in shipping artwork to clients — one good thing about digital pastels, they don’t often accidentally smear, and there is much less dust to breath into your lungs)
Today’s portrait is of one of the founding members of the ‘Guy’s Movie Club’ (an informal group of guys who get together to see movies, generally the type the wives aren’t interested in, that involve lots of violence, guns, car chases, things blowing up, scantily clad women, and barely articulate beefy action stars). Pete is the brother-in-law of one of my music buddies and is a living walking breathing movie trivia encylopedia.
Today’s portrait I tried to keep as loose as possible (the photo it was based on was pretty poorly lit) almost as if I were doing a rough preliminary sketch. The main difficulty is knowing when to quit before it gets overworked.
And since I had a little extra time today, I did another one. This one is of a client of mine from way back in the days when I was working for a graphics shop in the mid-eighties, Walter. This one I did in a mixture of mediums, but mostly in colored pencil in the final stages.