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Rick Smolan aged up redux.
Last October we all lost our marbles over seeing Adam with his glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt, and speculation as to the correction of those glasses ran pretty wild. It seemed likely that they were readers, given that we've never seen him wearing contacts or corrective lenses, his tendency to hold anything he's reading at arm's length, and the fact that he was about to turn 39.
I remember thinking at the time that it was odd that Adam would have spent the money on such a nice set of frames when he could have gotten a pair of readers for $20 at Walgreens, but whatever man, it's his money.
AND THEN.
In the first of a series of surprise appearances this month, Adam was spotted with his wife, Joanne, at the VIP opening party for the "Spike Lee's Creative Sources" special exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, wearing a casually unbuttoned white shirt, blue chinos, this crinkly smile, and his glasses! In public! Now we know what he looks like with them on (to quote Leslie Jones, he looks FOINE) and we can reasonably guess that they're NOT readers, but to help him see things at a distance. Mystery kind of solved!
But the best part of this particular moment is the smile he's wearing; it's a delight to get to see a glimpse of 2012-era Adam's brand of as-yet unguarded joy on his 2023-era face. He looks so happy to be there with his wife, in that space, seeing these special objects being shared by his friend, in a way that hasn't really been seen much since his arrival as an A-list actor; post-TFA Adam's smiles have tended to be more reserved. But not this one! It's like we're back in 2012, seeing his sweet smiles behind the scenes while filming "Tracks," but with the maturity of his nearly-40 yr old face.
The depth and breadth of Adam's open joy can be read in the way this smile is shaping his face. His normally very full lips are pulled so wide that they've thinned, revealing his teeth all the way back to his first molar, and the upper lip has risen high enough to show the arches of his gums at the top of those teeth; speaking of gums, the tips of his lower front teeth are hidden behind a piece of chewing gum he's holding between his lower lip and teeth. The width of that smile has, in turn, carved every one of his many dimples into a series of nested parentheses bracketing his mouth. Those rumples run right up to his temples, curving over the crest of his cheekbones into the ever-deepening creases that form the crow's feet crinkles near his eyes. His right eye is narrowed just a touch more than his left in his characteristically slightly lopsided smile, which always pulls a little harder to that side of his face.
An interesting oddity that became extremely apparent in the rough earlier stages of this portrait is the uneven level of the two inner corners of his eyes; the right eye is slightly, but noticeably, higher than the left. I don't think it's another example of his beautiful asymmetry or of an artistic tendency of mine, especially since I've not noticed it before in any of the other 122 portraits I've done of him. Rather, I suspect it's a combination of the refraction from the lens of his glasses combined with the angle of the pose; glasses correcting for myopia tend to make the eyes behind them appear a little smaller than they actually are, and his right eye is farther away from us than his left, which puts it a tiny bit higher in the frame.
Other details I noticed along the way include the fact that his goatee, which was so very neatly trimmed for his appearance at the Venice FF, had grown back out into it's more usual slightly scraggly self, the tips of his moustache falling over his upper lip, his beard hairs curling enthusiastically, the edges of his chin hair less stringently defined. He's doing the thing I love so much, tucking his chin down as he grins, which gives him that endearing fold under his jaw that leads right up into his second and third sets of dimples.
Photo used for reference was taken by Nina Westervelt at the Brooklyn Museum during the VIP opening of the "Spike Lee's Creative Sources" exhibit on 3 Oct 2023.
About 12.5 hrs of painting time. Truly candid references like this one, where his hair is just how it is on the day to day, really emphasize how much care and effort gets put into neatly arranging his locks for official appearances; the happy chaos of those curls by the corner of his jaw take a while to render, with the smaller curl families all overlapping like that instead of encouraged to act as a cohesive unit.
Last October we all lost our marbles over seeing Adam with his glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt, and speculation as to the correction of those glasses ran pretty wild. It seemed likely that they were readers, given that we've never seen him wearing contacts or corrective lenses, his tendency to hold anything he's reading at arm's length, and the fact that he was about to turn 39.
I remember thinking at the time that it was odd that Adam would have spent the money on such a nice set of frames when he could have gotten a pair of readers for $20 at Walgreens, but whatever man, it's his money.
AND THEN.
In the first of a series of surprise appearances this month, Adam was spotted with his wife, Joanne, at the VIP opening party for the "Spike Lee's Creative Sources" special exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, wearing a casually unbuttoned white shirt, blue chinos, this crinkly smile, and his glasses! In public! Now we know what he looks like with them on (to quote Leslie Jones, he looks FOINE) and we can reasonably guess that they're NOT readers, but to help him see things at a distance. Mystery kind of solved!
But the best part of this particular moment is the smile he's wearing; it's a delight to get to see a glimpse of 2012-era Adam's brand of as-yet unguarded joy on his 2023-era face. He looks so happy to be there with his wife, in that space, seeing these special objects being shared by his friend, in a way that hasn't really been seen much since his arrival as an A-list actor; post-TFA Adam's smiles have tended to be more reserved. But not this one! It's like we're back in 2012, seeing his sweet smiles behind the scenes while filming "Tracks," but with the maturity of his nearly-40 yr old face.
The depth and breadth of Adam's open joy can be read in the way this smile is shaping his face. His normally very full lips are pulled so wide that they've thinned, revealing his teeth all the way back to his first molar, and the upper lip has risen high enough to show the arches of his gums at the top of those teeth; speaking of gums, the tips of his lower front teeth are hidden behind a piece of chewing gum he's holding between his lower lip and teeth. The width of that smile has, in turn, carved every one of his many dimples into a series of nested parentheses bracketing his mouth. Those rumples run right up to his temples, curving over the crest of his cheekbones into the ever-deepening creases that form the crow's feet crinkles near his eyes. His right eye is narrowed just a touch more than his left in his characteristically slightly lopsided smile, which always pulls a little harder to that side of his face.
An interesting oddity that became extremely apparent in the rough earlier stages of this portrait is the uneven level of the two inner corners of his eyes; the right eye is slightly, but noticeably, higher than the left. I don't think it's another example of his beautiful asymmetry or of an artistic tendency of mine, especially since I've not noticed it before in any of the other 122 portraits I've done of him. Rather, I suspect it's a combination of the refraction from the lens of his glasses combined with the angle of the pose; glasses correcting for myopia tend to make the eyes behind them appear a little smaller than they actually are, and his right eye is farther away from us than his left, which puts it a tiny bit higher in the frame.
Other details I noticed along the way include the fact that his goatee, which was so very neatly trimmed for his appearance at the Venice FF, had grown back out into it's more usual slightly scraggly self, the tips of his moustache falling over his upper lip, his beard hairs curling enthusiastically, the edges of his chin hair less stringently defined. He's doing the thing I love so much, tucking his chin down as he grins, which gives him that endearing fold under his jaw that leads right up into his second and third sets of dimples.
Photo used for reference was taken by Nina Westervelt at the Brooklyn Museum during the VIP opening of the "Spike Lee's Creative Sources" exhibit on 3 Oct 2023.
About 12.5 hrs of painting time. Truly candid references like this one, where his hair is just how it is on the day to day, really emphasize how much care and effort gets put into neatly arranging his locks for official appearances; the happy chaos of those curls by the corner of his jaw take a while to render, with the smaller curl families all overlapping like that instead of encouraged to act as a cohesive unit.
