Oliver Giller – LeMasney Consulting
With just a few minutes to spare to get in today’s sketch (Easter) I’m thrilled to share this portrait of Oliver Giller. Oliver is the person to first introduced me to the concept of Open Source. He is easily the largest philosophical influence on my life, and helped to form what I list amongst the most important beliefs that I have. I lost touch with him after he graduated from Rider University about 9 years ago, but always remembered the things that he introduced me to, including the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Linux, and the GNU General Public License.
Withing the last 2 years or so, though, we’ve reconnected, and I’m happy to say that we are even doing a project together, which I’m doing this sketch for. I’m less happy to report that Oliver had to undergo brain surgery recently which left him with a scar, and in Oliver’s work to recover he donated a picture of his new stitches and asked that I do something creative with it for our project, essentially a journal of his recent health issues.
In Inkscape, I did a bitmap trace of Oliver’s face, in which you could clearly see the scar and stitches, but without explanation, it looked only as though he had a bad haircut on one side. I decided in the interest of clarity and also of not offending anyone with the graphic nature of the subject to take a highly stylized approach to the scar and stitches. It was fun to stitch a pattern using the Bezier tool, and I think I may use this technique again.
I’m of the firm belief that Oliver has all the best chances to make a full recovery, including a beautiful wife and family, parents who have supported him forever, and a strong network of friends. Thanks, Oliver, for all you’ve given me in life, now go kick this thing’s ass, so you can get back to the important stuff.
This content is published under the Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Nice blog! Had to check it out after you visited mine. You have some neat art. I’ll have to go through some of your old posts to see everything. Glad to hear you reconnected with your friend. I hope Oliver makes a full recovery.
Something’s wrong with your feed. I can’t seem to subscribe. I’ve got you on Twitter so I’ll get your updates there.
Thanks, Dani! I appreciate the note about subscribing. I just tested my feed at http://lemasney.com/consulting/*feed and it worked for me. It’s RSS, rather than Atom, but it should be working now. Thanks again, and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of your project. Cheers!
Pingback: Portait of Oliver Giller by John LeMasney « Attitude and Action
Pingback: Oliver Giller – The Lantern