Pen and Ink Stipple Portrait of Michael J. Fox

Almost exactly 10 years ago I wrote the blog piece below about my experience creating a drawing of Michael J. Fox. As it happens - I watched his new documentary; Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie the other night on Apple TV+, and just seeing him in interviews from around the same time as our association brought back nice memories. The film, Directed by An Inconvenient Truth’s Davis Guggenheim was really touching and poignant and funny…I highly recommend!

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Twenty-five years ago, I was commissioned to create a portrait of Michael J. Fox for Universal Studios. I honestly don't recall what they used the drawing for. I do remember that the Back to the Future films were an awfully big deal at the time, but the assignment was to draw Michael as himself - not as a particular character.

Back then, watercolor / guache was my preferred medium for portrait work. I was also building a portfolio of pen & ink stipple drawings that were a style favored by ad agencies for product illustration. This project was one of my first attempts to apply my stipple techniques to portraiture.

I sat in on Michael's photo shoot with photographer Tony Costa. We enjoyed a pretty friendly rapport, I think mostly because we were about the same size (and spoke of our ability to still buy some of our clothes in the boy’s department).

I've actually done very few portraits in this tighter, more traditional stippling technique since then - preferring the more precise dot patterns of the Wall Street Journal's "hedcut" style, but I always liked the way this drawing turned out, and the client did too.