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Clinton Beetle

28" x 20", oil on canvas, 2012, private collection

Back in February, Krista and I held a contest to celebrate our two year anniversary at Small Pond Arts. We were kind of surprised to find, once everything was added up, just how much we had achieved in those two years. This wasn't about bragging because it was stuff we had to do out of necessity, but we thought it might inspire others to share the great things they had achieved...and that, in turn, might inspire others as well.

The draw was random and on 15 March we had our winners; I was most concerned with the winner of the portrait since I'd be painting it. A local PEC man named Clinton won that and we discussed ideas for the painting over Facebook. It turns out he is a big comics fan and his favourite character is the Blue Beetle –and we figured it'd be a whole lotta fun if the portrait of Clinton had him wearing BB's costume. Being a fan myself, I was not only familiar with BB, but I even had a number of issues of Justice League America from the late 80s which happen to have been drawn by Clinton's favourite artist of BB, Kevin Maguire. So after we had a brief photo shoot, I rummaged through my JLAs for suitable costume reference and set about "dressing up" Clinton as the Blue Beetle.

It was really lots of fun to paint and, needless to say, we were both very happy with the result.



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