I haven’t done a painting in years. I typically don’t enjoy painting. However, on Friday, the muse struck; I wanted to paint! And what’s more, I knew exactly what I wanted to paint: The Handsomest Man in O-Town. (Ed Bighead, in an episode of Rocko’s Modern Life, in which he recounts a time when he was known as “The handsomest man in O-Town,” and how he subsequently lost those looks.) Now, up until that point, we recognized Ed Bighead (voiced by Charlie Adler) in this form:

In this episode, we learned that Ed used to look like this:

Mr. Bighead’s “handsome” face has always cracked me up, and on Friday, I decided I wanted to paint that, but I wanted to glorify it in a classical style, inspired by John Singer Sargent, but not nearly as good, so totally my own thing! 😉

I labored through the night, forced myself to go to bed, and resumed work the next morning. The result was this painting:

Translating a cartoon character into a classical portrait left a lot of odd decisions for me to make, such as “Should I paint tear ducts, and what color would his tear ducts be?” I tried to straddle the line between cartoon and realism, and I think it worked out enough. It has a feeling somewhere between classic portraiture and those moments in Ren & Stimpy where they would cut to a frame in which the object in question was up-close and hyper-realistic/horrifying.

I cleaned up the picture in Photoshop and made it available as prints, stickers, clothing, and more in my Redbubble shop.

I made two versions available: A basic one, and another where I Photoshopped a frame and name plate onto it.

I can’t wait to get a really majestic frame to hang the original in! 😀