Portrait of Jean: A Dad Story

My dad had always had a desire to learn how to draw faces.  Even when I was a young child I remember him talking about it.  He loved the way someone could capture an expression or a facial feature and really define someone.  He had done a ton of sketching in his professional life, but it was all straight lines - pipes, assembly lines, building specs.  People and the curves that go with them had eluded him. 

In his retired life, my dad took pretty full advantage of what life had to offer.  He travelled with me all over the place, sometimes in comfort but oftentimes getting closer to the 'roughing it' edge of travel comfort.  He never complained.  

He moved halfway across the planet after selling or giving away everything he owned.  Once there, he made new friends, built new routines,  and even got kind of buff actually.  He stayed well-informed about politics and world issues and often wrote insightful posts or emails about important topics.  Along the way, he signed up for a blog, facebook, twitter...I sometimes gave him a hard time about his tech 'mistakes' but really, he was quite adept at navigating the clutter of the digital world.

Dad's last drawing - Jean

In the last couple of years of his life I persuaded him to try drawing.  He checked out some books from the library, watched a ton of videos online, and finally took some lessons with a friend.  He got a lot better, though the results sometimes fell a bit shy of the mark.  He pulled off some really good ones and created some memorably comic ones.  

The week he died, a dear friend of ours, Jean,  invited all three of us over to her house for dinner.  While we were talking at the table, my dad grabbed a pencil and paper and sketched this beauty.  Let's just say that it (thankfully) looks nothing like her; Jean doesn't look like a man with a bowl cut. Better yet, let's say that Jean was a really good sport about this 'portrait' and continues to laugh about it to this day.  

This was the probably the last drawing my dad did.  It was certainly no masterpiece, but I like to think of it as just one more thing my dad was willing to try even as an old man.  I hope I'm doing the same thing.