More Tall Paul Sketches

February 21, 2012

Still fretting over my cover assignment for John Boessenecker. So far, I haven't captured the massive frame of my sitter, but I'm getting there.

Last weekend in Wickenburg I met a guy at the parade who is almost exactly the proportions of lanky Sheriff Bob Paul. That is—six foot four and 270 pounds. I wanted to see how that massive of a guy would stand up to next to a Winchester. While the guy was not too thrilled about me taking his photograph, he allowed me a couple shots off my phone, with the assurance I would black out his eyes (he is a big dog in the corporate world):

Now, while he looks massive enough, the problem is when you extrapolate this pose directly (in other words, trace it) the massive size is diluted.

This perhaps has to do with camera angle, concave perspective, bad tracing, whatever. At any rate, it's not massive enough. So, from here I noodled the idea but pushed the anatomy a bit:

This resulted in the same problem: too massive on top, too short on the bottom. Here's another angle:

This face is probably the most accurate to the mug shot of Paul in the 1880s. Now to marry the two ends, keep the perspective but exaggerate the mass. Sketches to follow.

"Sometimes the only way to figure out how much is enough is by experiencing too much."
—Old Vaquero Saying