This one wasn't a distraction, more of a request. My eldest cousin, Jimmy, died a few years ago. I went to the funeral which was held just before the world shut down. It was the last time I'd seen anyone in the extended family and the first time I'd seen any of them since 1986. We are not close. Since then, I've been 'friends' with his widow on FB, sort of keeping in touch, mostly not. The other day, she posted a photo of Jimmy taken while he was undergoing treatments for the cancer that would kill him. She said that this was one of her favorite photos of him ever and tagged me stating that if I ever needed a subject for my artwork... *hint hint*. It was a surprise and one that I was flattered by as I didn't know she even looked at my work. It's also a hell of a challenge as the photo is not very good as far as reference goes (poor lightning, no shadows) which is to say, exactly like most of the reference I seem to use. It's also not a photo that I took, though in this case, I do like the expression and think it's pretty much him, as well as I knew him. Yesterday, I started working on the drawing, using a grid over the photo in Procreate, sending a screen shot to my computer and sketching from there into my sketchbook. This took about an hour. The biggest challenges are going to be the facial hair. He was blond when young and in this, his facial hair is almost white and also almost entirely indistinct. I've already overemphasized it and will have to likely do more than once drawing before I go to color. I'm thinking that this will be minimalist with line work done in Procreate and the whole thing reassembled in AD, as usual. Limited palette. More to come.