If you’ve been reading this site you know that I lost a very close friend, PG Holyfield.  This is some art I did in honor of him and to help me process his passing.  You can find out more about the Children’s Trust and how to help his family at PGHCT.org. Or donate to the gofundme while it’s open at gofundme.com/pgfund. First sketched on paper then redrawn in photoshop.  Lengthy details below.

This isn’t exactly a Daily Creativity, since it took me more than a day.  Sure sometimes I post things with the title of Daily creativity that take more than a day, but this one was worked on a little bit each day for five days.  It may not look like there as that much work put into it, but since this piece was so emotional to me, it was a lengthy process.  I erased and redrew about a million times, I had to get the faces just right.  I deliberated over the color of everyone’s shirt (which no one notices) and drew how our hands are placed so many times the paper was wearing thin. I wanted to have all of us, and by all of us I mean the cast of the Beyond the Wall Podcast, supporting PG, Viv and myself on his sides, and then Christiana and Chooch behind us supporting us, I chose our positions from a cast photo we took at Balticon in 2013. Then I scanned it into photoshop and low and behold my trusty stylus stopped sensing my pressure.  I tried to reinstall the drivers, clean it out and did everything short of replacing the nibs (still working on finding some) before I realized, it’s not happening.  All at the same time my other trusty pointing device finally died on me for good.  I use a Logitech Trackball, it’s a trackball mouse that is moved by the thumb, great for ergonomics, great for cluttered desks, and I have so much more control with that now over a regular mouse because I have adapted to it.  Turns out after enough use the wireless starts clicking on it’s own and double to quadruple clicking, for the last 6 months to a year I have been fixing it by taking out the battery, switching the dongle’s usb port, and clicking buttons till the residual energy is dissipated in the capacitors, but that stopped working that week.  This week I replaced the pointing device and realized how much I had worn down my old device, the new one feels so stiff and the buttons are so high in comparison. In the last 6-7 years I have gone through four and a half of these, all but the last were wired and lasted much longer, but you can’t buy wired anymore, and you can’t buy the microsoft version anymore either, and they don’t seem to be planning on making a bluetooth version, which they should.  I realized just how much I use my pointing device though, and it kinda shocked me, but like sneakers, there is a milage rating that you need to replace these things.  So, back to the picture, I was able to redraw and color all using my back up mouse that I keep in my laptop backpack for students and teachers who need a mouse. I remember finishing up the picture while listening to the Game of Thrones soundtrack which just added to the extra feels.

There is talk of doing a limited print run of this image, the prints would be numbered and all proceeds would go to the Trust Fund set up for his children.  Any news on that and I will fill you in.