The day before yesterday one of my blogger friends, Ted Giffin, asked me if he could use my Gravatar profile pic to make a portrait. Knowing and loving his work, “Hell, yes!”, was my immediate reply. I didn’t think anything more about it, as I did not expect Ted to be a super speed drawer/painter, or necessarily have the time to attend to the job in the immediate future. I was THRILLED when I opened my email app yesterday to find attached, the above scan.

I love Ted’s blog, especially when he publishes posts about his visual art. His drawings have a spontaneity I love. His paintings use heavy impasto layers to build up frequently colourful impressions of a friend or model. His view of the world when doing cityscapes, flowers or birds is often a riot of heavy layers of colour and texture.

Ted sent me an email with the scan and wrote –

I really do not know what color your eyes are,

but I thought bright green and blue and a bit of purple

would be nice.

 

Funnily enough, I actually do have green-blue eyes, albeit not as vividly portrayed above.

The portrait is based on the photobooth photo (below) which was taken in April 1997. It first appeared on this blog here.

Ted is an artist, musician and poet. His website is here. I urge you to take a look at more of his work.