Birthday gift

My buddy Chris turned 30 the other day, and for his birthday dinner his fiancée Chrystal asked us to make him something that had 30 in it. It could be 30 pencils, a list of 30 books he should read, whatever you wanted. Fortunately I had a break in my projects while waiting on approvals, so I thought I'd make him a nice keepsake.



Facebook is great, because you can do stealth caricatures of somebody without having to ask for reference photos. I snagged these photos off of Chris' page and his brother Jeff's and Chrystal's as well. Chris is in the band Graylit and so they take lots of artsy pictures where they don't look into the camera, so that gave me some great photos to work from.



I initally drew the sketch in the computer (above)--it was just easier that way. But I didn't want to give him a lame printout as a gift, that's no good. So I printed it out, put it on the light table and then hand-inked the final. Finally, I put it in a hard-to-find 4x5" black frame, and it was finished.

Chris with his gift at Bosco's in Hillsboro Village.