Jes certainly presented me with a challenge. He sent me a fantastic, moody photo of himself under the warm glow of a lamp. In the photo, Jes wears glasses, obscuring and abstracting his eyes. His hand covers his mouth and chin, but there is visible the trace of the shadow of the corner of his mouth and the suggestion of the outline of his chin. How does one take abstracted features and make them look like a certain person? I really had to approach this piece as a set of shape and colour relationships, rather than as someone trying to paint a face. Then there was the patterned shirt and my first real attempt at glazing - I enjoyed painting this a lot, and I hope I was successful at recreating the mood...