Barry Ruben...Need a hand? How to improvise..

Working on portrait number 3, Barry Ruben. Great challenges here, as the full body shot was in a suit and the face shot was in a reds uniform..........how to marry the two. Plus, I was missing the entire right arm in the full body shot and most of the left hand in the close up.

I determined it would work better if he were facing slightly to the left to keep the vision flowing across the mural, so I elected to 'flip' the body. This solved a couple of problems, as I was able to them use the left hand in the body shot to sketch from and just change the angle. I drew a rectangle over the right hand as a guide; my sketch still ended up being a little large so I used my printer to reduce my drawing 10% and it fit just right.

 

Changing the position of the hand presented another problem; the extended fingers now looked awkward , so I made them appear to be curled up more.

Barry Ruben, co-owner of Lima Bargain Center and owner of the semi-pro baseball team, the Lima Locos. ( The sponsors are in sw Florida and would have loved to have been here to add a stroke or two!       Well, guess that is a small price to pay for being where it is warm and sunny in January.)