Creating Historical Portraits for a Distiller’s Website

This week's art[icle] is about how I found myself creating another round of historical portraits for a distiller’s website.A few weeks ago on this blog, I shared some WSJ hedcut style images that I had made for Buffalo Trace, the whiskey makers. This distillery was upgrading its website, and they tapped me to create custom portraits of their various master-distillers, down through the years.The company wanted to add to this collection, so last month I made four additional portraits. I present them here…Looking a bit stern for the subject’s name, Gayheart…The photo reference for this gent was poor:I made the best of it. The tricky part was getting his left eye to line up with the right one. In these instances of the so-called ¾ view, the nose can obscure part of the eye, making the subject appear cross-eyed. Can’t allow that to stand!There is no such issue with this fine profile shot:And, finally, the current master-distiller, Harlen Wheatley:Cheers!