Kayla's Jordan

My dear lost her brother unexpectedly recently.  

I was so honored that she asked me to do his portrait as a tribute to him.  It really touched me that she reached out to me in her time of sorrow and entrusted me to do this... 

I have known Kayla from deviantart for about as long as I have been here I think.  She is a wonderful, beautiful person, extremely talented artist and singer (her voice reminds me of Pink, who is excellent) and I think the world of her.   I am really glad to be her friend.

I do feel inadequate to attempt this important project...this is my meager attempt to capture the soul of a man I never met or even had the privilege to chat with online.  I often do portraits of friends here and tap into my impressions of them from conversations to try to bring a bit more than just pencil lines to the portrait.  Kayla asked me to use this reference   and also sent me others to help me see his eye color better, etc.  

Not knowing him personnally, I focused mainly on one thing:  This is Kayla's brother, and this is a man who was loved by Kayla.  So in that sense, he was very blessed.

I used colored pencils to make this, and I tried to use a lot of layers of colors to give it the feel I was going for.  However, I was not happy with how it scanned, it looked washed out and certain colors stood out more than I wanted them to, though the original did not seem like that.  So I experimented with the contrast and saturation of the scan and deepened the shadows, and this is what I liked best.  To me, it is better than the original, and I hope I made the right choices.  

Kayla. I cannot hope to have hit the mark on this project, but I put a lot of love and care in my attempt.  I hope it does not disappoint in any way, because I only want to bring a bit of light and happiness to you in your time of sadness. I hope you do like it and may God heal your pain and fill you with His love to overflowing.