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• Portraits of celebrities • Illustrations

Brushes with Greatness: Where my art or me intersect with celebrities

Terri Ivens

Terri Ivens

Portrait shipped August, 2012

Actress, singer, writer, producer, mama, who was kind enough to actually offer to pose with my drawing of her!

Recently she appeared in the movie PiranhaConda

Terri Ivens ‏@TerriIvens
Look what I have for artist @Grokdad...Thank you for your kindness to sketch me! Yes, more please ;D #FF http://say.ly/exe47PR

 

Bill Scheft

Portrait shipped August, 2012

Writer for David Letterman, Author

His books can be found here.

And he is a great person who not only agreed to pose with his portrait, but uses it as his avatar on twitter.

Teal Sherer
Portrait shipped July, 2012

Teal's website can be found here.

Teal is an actress who played in the Guild as "Venom". She is also working on "My Gimpy Life"

She was excited to get the original drawing. Her and her new husband (congrats!) plan to frame it and hang it up in their new home!

Colin Ferguson and my family

Colin Ferguson


Colin Ferguson and my son

Colin Ferguson
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

Nicest person you could ever be lucky enough to meet:

Colin Ferguson, who played Sheriff Jack Carter on the series "Eureka", was one of the first celebrities who responded to my tweet and said it was ok to draw him. Months later, we connected at FandomFest in Louisville, where I was able to secure a photo op and actually hand him the original of the portrait I'd done of him a while back.

He was very gracious, funny, down to earth and someone you felt immediately you wish you had as a friend that would just drop by your house once in a while. He remembered the portrait and later as we got autographs from him, we were lucky enough to have some extra time chatting. Funny things from the chat:
-- when he was shot with paintballs and it looked like it hurt in one of the last episodes, that wasn't acting so much, it REALLY hurt him. I noted that it seemed like Joe Morton enjoyed shooting him just a little too much. He joked that all the other actors never had so much fun as when they inflicted damage.
-- My wife and I told him how he needs to find a venue that properly used his immense talents. He joked that he's seen some offers with strong female leads where they wanted him to be the husband, and he and I said at almost the same time "yeah, the STUPID husband".
-- I told him my son did an imitation of a silly dance he did while we were waiting for our photo op. He signed our autograph asking to see him dance, so we brought him up. He was wonderful to our son!

He was one of the most genuine and cool persons I've met, celebrity or not.

Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

Author of the Farseer Trilogy, the Soldier Son Trilogy, The Tawny Man Series

What an honor to meet an author whose work I have enjoyed and treasured for several years. Prolific and creative, she is one of my favorite authors of all time.

I was hoping to run into her so I drew a portrait ahead of time.Luckily enough, we saw her pass by and I boldly introduced myself. We had a very nice chat about her work, and I attended a panel discussion she was on the next day.

She was grateful I asked her permission to post the portrait on my site. Although it doesn't follow my usual pattern (celebs tweet me THEN I draw them) she didn't seem to mind. If you've never read the Farseer books, you've missed a great landmark in fantasy.

Walking Dead Actors, my art and my family

Jeffrey DeMunnNorman Reedus

Cast of The Walking Dead
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

The photo op was listed only as "Walking Dead" when I preordered, so my assumption was only Jeffery DeMunn and Norman Reedus were going to be there. What a treat for US that IronE Singleton, Madison Lintz and others were there! Not a treat for them, though, cause I only drew Jeffrey DeMunn and Norman Reedus ahead of time! If any other cast members want a drawing, please tweet me.

Jeffrey DeMunn asked my wife who drew the pictures, and she said "My husband!". Norman Reedus seemed to like his portrait and was surprised I was gifting it to them.

Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

The Actor who plays "Sam" in Burn Notice was doubly popular at this convention because he is also from the horror classic Evil Dead films.

As a result, lines for his photo ops stretched seemingly forever and when our turn came up, I used a phrase someone told us we could use: "What's up Brotazia". Bruce looked at us as if we had had a stroke or something. (oops!). I think the huge crowd and the rush he was in threw him so that he had no idea what we were talking about! He was very very nice, though. He did take the original drawing, and as he set it down said to himself "Hey, look at that".

He was quite the professional the way he made every pose look good with the various fans.

Sean Astin

Sean Astin

Sean Astin
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

Sean was another sincerely gracious and nice person. We (ok, I) had messed up and missed our photo op turn that was supposed to be an hour and half earlier. He happened to still be in the photo area, though chatting with volunteers and staff people. We were delighted to be allowed to get a photo with him anyways (thanks to understanding staff)

He was marvelous. Our son is a big Lord of the Rings fan (as am I). Sean joked around with us a bit and asked me how I drew the picture, what source photos I used. He was surprised and seemed pleased when I told him the picture was his to keep. How nice he was really comes through in the photo.

After the photo was taken, my son did his very good Smeagol imitation to thank him for the photo.He and the staff all laughed, and I said "He doesn't do a Samwise voice" so Sean proceeded to patiently train him on a short phrase to sound like Sam,Which my son did to near perfection, to the delight and applause of him and the volunteers.

What a class act!

John Rhys-Davies

John Rhys-Davies

John Rhys-Davies
FandomFest, Louisville 2012

The convention was winding down and I had one drawing yet to give! Since I'd messed up the time of the photo op earlier (see Sean Astin's story above), The other Lord of the Rings celeb was packing up to go. Through sheer luck, and my son pointing out where to go, we hurriedly ended up in an empty autograph room with John Rhys-Davies, a friend of his and some volunteers.

I quickly explained what happened but that I wanted to make sure he got his drawing. He loved it, but said in a self-deprecating way that it was "horribly accurate". His friend said "It looks just like you, only YOUNGER!" to which John Rhys-Davies replied "you (blank)!" good naturedly.

He set the drawing down and I asked if we could have our picture taken, to which he replied "It's the least I can do for such a nice drawing". Unfortunately, in all the confusion, I forgot to have him hold the picture!

Another funny thing was while posing, he was wriggling his fingers rather firmly in my side, I think to make me laugh or smile, but it was very HARD! Lol. I didn't say anything, but then he said we should take one with my wife, and he did the same to her, and she yelped "This old man is tickling me!"

Afterwards, my son did his smeagol imitation again and John Rhys-Davies pretended to be Gimli and told him "Cut that out, evil David, or I'll come at thee with my axe!"

Very nice man, and quite the cutup!