I had reduced the size of the eyes previously, because the original photo was a little doe-eyed, but I decided I reduced them a little too drastically. He was too beady-eyed, like a lizard or John Wesley Hardin. So I have brought the eyes back up, just a little, and added some very subtle wrinkles around the nose and forehead. I don't want to do too much of that, because Smeaton isn't even 30 yet, so I don't want him too wrinkled. Just a little weathering and character was needed.
Basically, I'm worried that if I continue to dink around with it, I'll start to make it worse instead of better, so I'm leaving it alone.
As I was going through my virus problems last week, I searched through my discs looking for a boot recovery disc a former co-worker had given me. And in the process, I found a disc with a bunch of old family photos I had gotten from a family reunion several years ago.
It was weird looking through the photos now, because I've been on a retro nostalgia kick for a while now. Here's a photo of my dad and his family.
Ross the family partriarch is in the center rear. He always seems to have his head cocked with this half-smile on his face, like he can't believe anyone is taking this picture stuff seriously. The two women are his wife Eunice (my grandmother, who died before I was born) and my Aunt Thelma. The rest are Ross's five sons and one daughter.
Dad is the one on the left with the glasses and the crutch. He was struck by polio as a kid and has walked on one crutch almost all of his life. And I don't know what it is in a lot of these pictures, his slender face or his dark hair with the rakish combover or the way he's usually doing the Clooney (head down, eyes up), but I seem to see Loki in those pictures, something dark and sly underneath the surface (or maybe it's just the nose; Kirby always drew Loki with a very distinctive nose).
It's weird to see these pictures, because the faces are familiar but the people are strangers. I hadn't met any of them yet, and in a sense, perhaps I still haven't, because the people I grew up seeing on holidays are not the people in these pictures. They were the people these folks became, and there's a difference. My dad is a cool guy, but I wonder what it would be like to meet him then, when he was younger than me. Would he seem like the same guy? Would I like him?
3 comments:
I like it. It looks like him.
Yes, I could see that as our Mr. Smeaton! I always seem to forget, though, that he has a such a humongous mustache. Don't know why . . . Also, I agree that he probably has a bit wilder hair than that.
Well, the mustache comes and goes. For instance, when you're burned practically to death by the fire-breathing mythological beast, it singes the mustache and makes it smaller. I figure this portrait to be Smeaton slightly after our current adventure(assuming he survives another few adventures).
But yeah, assuming, say, some random princess off the street happens to say, "I like it when it's big," of course Smeaton assumes she's speaking of his mustache and lets that baby grow.
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