{"id":489,"date":"2007-10-02T23:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-03T05:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=489"},"modified":"2007-10-02T23:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-03T05:54:00","slug":"2007-10-03-geoff-mulling-over-his-birthday-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2007-10-03-geoff-mulling-over-his-birthday-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"2007-10-03 Geoff Mulling Over His Birthday Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\">\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/1474301117\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1019\/1474301117_edc9b67c9b.jpg?w=605\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\t<span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/1474301117\/\">2007-10-03 Geoff Mulling Over His Birthday Wine<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/royblumenthal\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\">\tA friend of mine&#8217;s boyfriend&#8217;s father is turning 70 soon. So he zapped me on Facebook and said, &#8216;Roy&#8230; how much would you charge to make a portrait of him in your own inimitable style?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>So we negotiated. A deal was struck. Money was put into my bank account.<\/p>\n<p>And yesterday I used the reference pics he supplied to create this elaborate scene. <\/p>\n<p>The reference pics were tight head and shoulder shots. Which I felt were a little bit bald. Not bald as in &#8216;lack of hair&#8217;. Bald as in &#8216;not really revealing much about the dude&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why I searched through my reference materials to find a decent setting. And I had Geoff engaging in one of his favourite activities&#8230; exploring the inside of a decent bottle of wine.<\/p>\n<p>I sent it off to Jason, deeply confident that the second half of my payment would follow immediately, along with gushing praise. Sadly, it was not to be. (Actually, it&#8217;s not that sad. It&#8217;s an expected thing. In portraiture, the client almost always has something in mind. And when it doesn&#8217;t match, the portraitist always expects to make changes.)<\/p>\n<p>Jason said, &#8216;Uh, uhm, uh, I don&#8217;t know how to say this&#8230; but&#8230; it&#8217;s not EXACTLY what we had in mind. We were really hoping for a tight head and shoulders shot. I&#8217;m so embarrassed&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Hey,&#8217; I said, &#8216;no need to feel embarrassed! It&#8217;s a portrait. You&#8217;re the client! I&#8217;ll happily do another version.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Phshew,&#8217; said Jason. &#8216;I really didn&#8217;t know how to tell you that. Oh&#8230; by the way&#8230; can you make his head more round?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Lessons to be learned&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>1. Tell the client in advance that they&#8217;re free to dislike the pic, and that changes will happily be made. This will avoid their feeling embarrassed.<\/p>\n<p>2. When a client supplies multiple reference pics, and they&#8217;re all tight head and shoulders shots, chances are they want a tight head and shoulders portrait, not a mystical scene on a beach.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230; this is the one that got away. The new version is sitting with Jason right now. I expect he&#8217;s discussing it with his boyfriend. And I&#8217;ll know what he feels about it soon enough.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, this pic&#8217;s out and about. Feel free to hate, like, love it.<\/p>\n<p><i>This painting was made in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ambientdesign.com\/artrage.html\">ArtRage 2.5<\/a> and finished in Photoshop CS2. It started out in CorelDraw 10 as six reference photos all comped together to make a rough reference. The arm holding the wine bottle is actually from a pic I took of my own arm holding a bottle of balsamic vinegar.<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2007-10-03 Geoff Mulling Over His Birthday Wine, originally uploaded by royblumenthal. A friend of mine&#8217;s boyfriend&#8217;s father is turning 70 soon. So he zapped me on Facebook and said, &#8216;Roy&#8230; how much would you charge to make a portrait of &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2007-10-03-geoff-mulling-over-his-birthday-wine\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2007-10-03 Geoff Mulling Over His Birthday Wine<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-7T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}