I love meeting and knowing cool people.  I really really do.  Those of you who've heard me talk about Photoshop World in the past know that's one of my favorite things. Honestly, if there were no classes I haven't taken yet at the show, I'd still go just to socialize.  Another cool thing about PSW is the Westcott Shootout Booth where you can shoot various models in various types of lighting.  This year was extra fun since Russell Brown, the Senior Creative Director at Adobe dressed up as Abraham Lincoln and spent a small amount of time in the booth.  I happened to be there while he was in the booth, and got this shot of him:

Soon after that PSW, I received an email from my friend Patrick LaMontagne.  I've had him do a guest blog post here in the past, speaking about his life and freakin' cool illustrations.  He wanted to know if he could use my photo as a reference since he really wanted to paint Russell as Lincoln, but I couldn't tell anybody. That was hard, but I survived the process, and was very excited when he released his brand new portrait this week.

I'm only going to say this once about Monty.  He starts with a completely blank canvas in Photoshop, paints from scratch, and just uses the photo as a reference.  

Ok, that bears repeating, in bold this time.

He starts with a completely blank canvas in Photoshop, paints from scratch, and just uses the photo as a reference. 

You can view his blog post on the subject on his website, which also includes a short time lapse video of the process.