SEAT BACK       Ink on Paper, 9 x 7"

Seat Back was the first of a series of three little portraits of my brother Andy's children.  This is Will.  He was 8 when I was working on this; but here he is 5.  I had to think a bit harder about what scenarios to use for the drawings I would later do of his sisters Isabel and Calle.  But the wide faced almost theatrical exuberance I saw in this photo of his peaking around an airplane seat made it an obvious choice for him.

 

I think the variety of items that were in and out of focus in the source material made my choices a bit more tentative than they other wise might have been.  The other source of tentativeness might have been my being a bit out of practice after a long hiatus. The stitching in the seat itself was something I worked on with great attention.  I really wanted there to be a very tactile sense of its cushion-ness.  The precise angle of the hard light source helped considerably.  The hair is idiosyncratic and and has more of a painterly quality than I am used to.