Jeb Bush for The Weekly Standard

This was a one day turn around for The Weekly Standard. I started with sketches around 8:00 a.m. Friday morning and finished with the painting around 8:00 p.m. that night. With a quick job like this, I have to pace myself . . . I need to spend a certain amount of time on each part of the painting, face, hands etc . . . if I don't do this, I end up spending too much time in one area and not enough in other areas.

I find that hands take me just as long to draw and paint as the face, hands are just as important as the face to get right. So for this piece I wish had more time to spend on the hands but because of the tight turnaround I decided to focus more on Jeb's face . . . once I got it to a certain point I began to loosen up towards the edges of his face and continued with this throughout the rest of the body.

For the background I would have rather had a lighter and brighter blue sky, but because of type reading well against the background, I had to paint the sky much darker. Because of this, the background ended up a bit gloomy compared to what my first intentions had been for the piece.

Overall it was a fun piece to work on, Jeb's has an interesting face. It's similar to his older brother yet has its own interesting qualities, somewhat like a heavier George Bush.





Quick sketch . . . working out an idea for the body type.






Starting to block in the idea given to my by the a.d.




Making adjustments to the tree line and composition . . .