Good friend Matt Henry departed Germany in March 2019 and headed back to The States after five years and countless deliberately-missed opportunities to learn even the most basic German phrases.
This was how his office decided to mark his going away. I started with a low-resolution copy of Pompeo Batoni’s 1778 portrait of Francis Basset. I composed a Photoshop document full of reference photos that represented a half-dozen inside jokes specific to Herr Henry. (He collects antique furs and his coworkers say he has the social subtlety of the Hormone Monster from Netflix’s “Bigmouth” to name a few.) Then using my pressure sensitive Wacom Tablet, I added dozens of layers of digital paint of varying transparencies. Not too unlike my old days of actual oil painting, except here I had the handy Undo key!
