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| 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.
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| Ed feels pretty. Oh so pretty. |