176: A Man For His Time

An oddly random link cropped up in a thread on HOW magazine's online forum – this one, to be precise; an image gallery on a seemingly forgotten genealogy page – which painted a strong picture of a time in none-too-distant history that, for many reasons, many who witnessed would choose to forget. Take a look at the link and you'll see. I may one day think the same thing about my own favourite period of nostalgia (the grunge era) – but for now, not likely.

Coincidentally, Illustration Friday offers up the goes-in-all-directions theme of time. And I decided as such, that I wanted to pay tribute to the mutton-chopped chap in the go-go, whiz-bang 1960s information retrieval industry, and to a unique period of time in fashion (and facial hair).

This illustration, drawn with a fine-nib Pigma Micron and a pseudo-calligraphic pen, does not venture far from its original source material. But afterwards I opted for a certain colour scheme, and style, that accentuates the man's place in time; and had fun sticking to a two-toned palette. The erasing away of the background shapes was done with custom Photoshop brushes I made, based from old scans of sumac bush leaves.

There's detail in the inking that this blog – and its 500-pixel picture dimensions – does not do justice. So for that I say look here, for a better glimpse of what I was attempting.