Adam Driver #61 (Interview magazine Nov 2016) {art}

He is Large and In Charge. Pay no attention to the bathtub.

The reference I used for this piece is one of those photos that I find hard to look away from, and it's not just that Adam is looking especially delicious in all his wet, bedraggled glory.

This is a very large man folded carefully into a small space, but he's not withdrawn or hiding. No, this pose is ENGAGED; Adam's leaning forward, chin tucked a little so that his head is in line with his spine, as opposed to relaxed to loll back a little and expose his windpipe. His impressively wide shoulders are rolled forward so that he can drape his forearms over his knees, arching his back a little, like a territorial dog or cat. That carefully neutral expression is rendered intimidating by the way he's tipped his eyes up to stare at us from under his brows. And take a look at his hands.

The left is inoffensive enough, laying gently over his right forearm, fingers tucked under his upper arm. But his right hand! Instead of the fingers being draped over his bicep, Adam has it curled into a tight fist, you can see how the muscles in his forearm are thrown into sharp relief from the tension.

Put bluntly, he looks like he's quietly thinking about how he's going to end a fight before it's even really gotten started. And that sense of subtly coiled not-quite-menace is a big part of why I don't want to look away. I'm waiting for him to blink first.
Photo used as reference was taken by Steven Klein on 1 Nov 2016 for an article in Interview magazine dated 28 Nov 2016.

13-ish hours of drawing time for this one. It took a while to render those arm hairs of his, which remind me strongly of a tiger's stripes. This was another one where I let the background grain show through by painting in black over the white of the background. I like the feel of that technique, but it is less flexible when it comes to making adjustments down the line. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor when it came to those arm hairs and used my resources by putting them on a separate layer where my fussing and smudging of them wouldn't affect all the hard work I did on getting his hands and arms to look right.