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Our king of complex expressions, giving us another one to puzzle over.
I was happy and sad to hear the news that we won't be seeing Adam at the Venice Film Festival this year for the premiere of "The Last Duel." Happy, because I know he's busy doing what he loves best, and because I was able to immediately release the worry I was quietly carrying about him catching this new variant of covid on a plane or in a crowd. And sad, because I really would have dearly loved to have gotten another chance to see him looking fit and happy and dressed to the nines like he was at Cannes in July.
But it would be terribly entitled of me to be upset about him not appearing on a red carpet; he doesn't owe us anything beyond what we get when we buy a ticket to watch one of his performances. Instead, I'm going to celebrate what we saw during his last stint in Venice, in late Aug 2019.
This was one of two very fine looks we saw on Adam in Venice that day. The second was, of course, that gorgeous tux and bow tie he wore to the red carpet of the premiere, along with that surprisingly wide, genuine smile that wreathed his face. This suit, with the narrow textured tie, was for the photocall earlier in the day; his hair isn't yet wind-tousled, so I suspect this was taken at his hotel before the ride in the water taxi, and I find that timing significant in decoding what's going on with his expression.
The wider focus of photo I used as a reference distracts us from his facial expression, pulling our eye down and across the page to our right with the long beautiful line of Adam's arm, following his gaze, leading down to his right hand laid so gently on the stone railing in what appears at first glance to be a commanding pose. It's a striking image, but since I prefer to concentrate on rendering Adam's facial expressions, I chose to crop my version much closer. And look at what I found when I did!
It's at entirely anxious odds with the seeming confidence being projected by the rest of his body. I could dismiss the faintly worried tilt of Adam's eyelids and rumples in his brow as him squinting in the bright light if it weren't for that slowly released breath puffing his mouth. Put that together with the fact that he had yet to run the media gauntlets of the day, and I wonder if there's another possible interpretation of that pose; that he's taking this relatively quiet moment before the storm to brace himself mentally and physically for the happy insanity ahead.
Photo used for reference was taken by Greg Williams at the Venice Film Festival either just before or after the "Marriage Story" photocall on 29 Aug 2019.
A Note On Composition: the original image pulls our eye down across the page from upper left to lower right. In the close crop I made for this portrait the diagonal is perpendicular to that, running from upper right to lower left. That the composition of this crop should pull our gaze in a direction at perpendicular odds with the larger image, just as his facial expression is at odds with the larger pose of his body, was a happy accident I find amusingly apt.
8.5 ish hours of drawing time. I completely forgot to account for my usual color overlays, and had to touch up most of everything as a result; I've been working with color gradient maps so much that it slipped my mind!
I was happy and sad to hear the news that we won't be seeing Adam at the Venice Film Festival this year for the premiere of "The Last Duel." Happy, because I know he's busy doing what he loves best, and because I was able to immediately release the worry I was quietly carrying about him catching this new variant of covid on a plane or in a crowd. And sad, because I really would have dearly loved to have gotten another chance to see him looking fit and happy and dressed to the nines like he was at Cannes in July.
But it would be terribly entitled of me to be upset about him not appearing on a red carpet; he doesn't owe us anything beyond what we get when we buy a ticket to watch one of his performances. Instead, I'm going to celebrate what we saw during his last stint in Venice, in late Aug 2019.
This was one of two very fine looks we saw on Adam in Venice that day. The second was, of course, that gorgeous tux and bow tie he wore to the red carpet of the premiere, along with that surprisingly wide, genuine smile that wreathed his face. This suit, with the narrow textured tie, was for the photocall earlier in the day; his hair isn't yet wind-tousled, so I suspect this was taken at his hotel before the ride in the water taxi, and I find that timing significant in decoding what's going on with his expression.
The wider focus of photo I used as a reference distracts us from his facial expression, pulling our eye down and across the page to our right with the long beautiful line of Adam's arm, following his gaze, leading down to his right hand laid so gently on the stone railing in what appears at first glance to be a commanding pose. It's a striking image, but since I prefer to concentrate on rendering Adam's facial expressions, I chose to crop my version much closer. And look at what I found when I did!
It's at entirely anxious odds with the seeming confidence being projected by the rest of his body. I could dismiss the faintly worried tilt of Adam's eyelids and rumples in his brow as him squinting in the bright light if it weren't for that slowly released breath puffing his mouth. Put that together with the fact that he had yet to run the media gauntlets of the day, and I wonder if there's another possible interpretation of that pose; that he's taking this relatively quiet moment before the storm to brace himself mentally and physically for the happy insanity ahead.
Photo used for reference was taken by Greg Williams at the Venice Film Festival either just before or after the "Marriage Story" photocall on 29 Aug 2019.
A Note On Composition: the original image pulls our eye down across the page from upper left to lower right. In the close crop I made for this portrait the diagonal is perpendicular to that, running from upper right to lower left. That the composition of this crop should pull our gaze in a direction at perpendicular odds with the larger image, just as his facial expression is at odds with the larger pose of his body, was a happy accident I find amusingly apt.
8.5 ish hours of drawing time. I completely forgot to account for my usual color overlays, and had to touch up most of everything as a result; I've been working with color gradient maps so much that it slipped my mind!
