For no reason at all, a portrait of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

A devil-may-care Eddie in The Love Feast (1969).

This took a while, surprisingly. Longer than it should have. I'm sure this portrait of Ed Wood probably could have been accomplished in Photoshop in about five seconds, but I assure you, all those little blobs of color you see up there were done one at a time, painstakingly, over the course of a few hours. Yes, hours. During that time, using a small, grainy still of Ed as my only reference material, I spent quite a while contemplating the man's face. His appearance was pretty badly ravaged by 1969, thanks to all those years of alcoholism and professional rejection. I found some colors in his face that should not be found in human skin: grayish-brown patches with a hint of green and blobs of deep burgundy. A man's face should not match the carnation pinned to his jacket.

And yet, there's also something of the satyr in Ed's demeanor, even at this point in his life. There's a spark of playfulness in his eyes and his smile. Hopefully, I captured that. Either way, I can tell you that Ed's spotty necktie was a nightmare to capture, as was the shrubbery next to him. Tragically, I had to crop most of the shrubbery so that the pic would fit on this blog. The full version is here.

Incidentally, the title of this piece is A Chubby Angel With Gin Blossoms. It's a reference to the Overdrawn At The Memory Bank episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Here's another Wood portrait, this one based on Eddie's role in Mrs. Stone's Thing.

Ed feels pretty. Oh so pretty.