For TALL IN THE SADDLE the client asked for a ”1930’s ‘hand-painted’ poster look”.  Unfortunately the approved reference photo of John Wayne was from THE SEARCHERS 10 years later!  Everything in shadow was solid black.  No one could find reference of Wayne from that period and angle.  I grabbed VHS tape frames from TALL IN THE SADDLE of Wayne’s face and reconstructed the shadow lighting out of my head.

Universal’s V.P. of marketing once told me I was the only illustrator he’d met who could take a actor’s portrait and turn their head any direction and maintain a likeness.  Perhaps I inhereted 3D reasoning from my mathematician father.