Author Portrait By Lex Chase

I take terrible photographs, with blurry images and off-center layouts. I take even worse selfies, always getting my “bad” side. So when an aritst of Lex Chase’s calibre puts out an offer to do author portraits, I snapped it up!

She asked me what I wanted, and I gave her a laundry list, of course, because I have no idea what goes into doing a portrait. I’m a writer, not an artist! But I do know good art when I see it, so looking over Lex’s portfolio made my mind go a little wild, like a kid in a candy store!

If you’ve ever seen Lex’s art, you will know right away what I mean. Her drawings are collections of color and tone and vivid lines, mixed with subtle details that you have to look, and look again, to see. I was a pretty long while looking and admiring, and I urge you to go give her page a vist so you can see for yourself just exactly what I mean.

One of the coolest things that Lex does is to film while drawing, so that you can watch a project from start to finish. I don’t know about you, but if someone were to film me while I was writing, I’d either freeze up and not be able to write, or I’d tap away at the keys with a frozen rictus smile on my face as I wrote “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again!

Not Lex. In under two minutes (the clip is time lapsed for speed) she deftly draws lines and shades colors and traces the sweep of hair, and quirk of a smile. In this case, my smile, my hair, my everything. The end result is that the drawing of me as an author looks like it should be in The New Yorker, accompanied by a smart article about the new up and coming author that is me. Yeah. It’s like that.

PS – I’m going to figure out how to share the video, if I can!!