Shaving Private Ryan

That title courtesy of Albert. This work represents when I went totally insane. It started out being a series on people whom I idolized in my childhood for arbitrary reasons. I was going to take away the thing about the figure I idolized to show how my perception changed for the figure over time.

I was starting off with a portrait of Ulysses S Grant without his beard (his beard being the reason he was my favorite president as a child). In order to do this, I drew Grant in colored pencil without a beard, then intended to add in background texture by using real beard hair. Because I was unable to find anyone who was willing to part with their beard at the time, I just used what little I could grow before the due date.

However, after the due date, I ended up with all this beard hair being donated to me thinking that I still needed it. As to not insult their sacrifice, I decided to change the concept to people infamous throughout history who had memorable facial hair, then remove the facial hair and see how the perception of the figure changes. After a night of rearranging a strangers beard hair with surgical gloves on a drawing of Karl Marx, I decided this was ridiculous and changed away from this topic. Now... I have two hairy drawings, and I'm not totally sure what to do with them.