Adam, pensive, his face tipped downward, hair subtly silver-shot, brows furrowed above eyes shuttered by delicately creased lids, lashes fanned over lean cheeks mazed by fine lines, the long, strong line of his nose leading to lips pulled into a mild moue above the point of his stubbled chin.
I’m back on my autumn 2019 bullshit, but can you blame me? I mean. Just look at him. Our brooding mountain.
I love atypical portrait poses, and this is a shining example of why. This quiet pose gives us a chance to appreciate Adam’s face from an angle we rarely get to see in detail, and, without the pressure of his extraordinarily magnetic gaze, our eyes have permission to linger longer than they might otherwise. The light falls across his features in a way that emphasizes the delicate creases on his eyelids, the maze of fine lines on his cheeks, and a whole host of new-to-me tiny scars, especially on the skin above his upper lip; they’re nothing you would probably notice in casual conversation, but they’re reminders that he is a real, living, breathing human, who’s lived a life that’s left evidence on his body in subtle ways.
He’s still in his very lean Henry McHenry era, “Annette” wouldn’t wrap until November, which we can see in the small hollows above the wide, soft wings of his gently knitted eyebrows, and in the prominence of his cheekbones, which are more sharply defined than usual. His cheeks are slack, but we can see where the furrows of his dimples form when he does smile, the skin folded ever so slightly even at rest, small wrinkles beginning to have a permanent home in the deepest creases. But the bridge of his stately nose is still as wide and strong as the muscles we know he has hiding under that sweater, and his mouth is as full as ever, bracketed by the grimace pulling just at the corners, lips in rumpled repose above the point of his asymmetrical chin. It’s a classically Adam, resting Hades, kind of expression; not unhappy, but a bit intimidating without really meaning to be.
And, then, of course, there’s The Hair. Adam’s top notch groomer, Ms Amy Komorowski, has a distinctive and very consistent way of organizing his waves, there’s one curl family in particular that she always coils so very carefully up and back, away from his face; about the only time we usually get to appreciate her work from this angle is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments when he’s signing autographs on the red carpet, so it’s a treat to get a properly good look at her artful arrangement. She also makes a point to meet her clients where they want to be in terms of facial hair, which is part of the secret to her trademark naturalistic style. In this case, he’s rocking a couple of day’s worth of stubble on top of a previous hasty shave job; there’s the occasional hair that’s more like a week long in there, lol, not that we mind. He likes to let the shaving routine rest when he can, and who could blame him? He’d been clean-shaven for every job since before the beginning of the year, and, for a man that we know likes to let his goatee roam free, that had to have been a trial.
Photo used for reference was taken by Art Streiber on or around 26 Oct 2019 as part of the promotion for the Variety Actors on Actors conversation Adam had with Charlize Theron.
This is the second time I’ve used this particular reference, the first was for AD #13. A new-to-me, very high res version showed up recently, and I figured that 100 portraits later was a good time to see how much my skills may have evolved since I last tackled this one.
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