My brother Paul is a fan of Heroes, so, when gift time rolled around, I thought it’d be an interesting idea to put into practice what I had learned from an online tutorial for Illustrator some time ago, and present him with a graphic-novel–style portrait. Substituting for Illustrator was Inkscape, the open-source vector-graphics editor—which has a few quirks that bother me, but has the massive advantage of being free, and is quite sufficient for my needs.

Printed as a 10″ by 8″ image, and suitably framed, I thought it actually looked quite impressive; and Paul appreciated it enough for it to adorn his music studio, so the time spent on it was worth more than just the experience gained in the process.

And now, as a shameless (and unrequested) advertisement for his own recently-launched website, I present further links to Paul Stewart Music (http://www.paulstewartmusic.co.uk/).  While the Venn diagram of musical preferences shows little intersection for the two of us, I have to admit that he does have talent.  Follow one of the four gratuitous links if you want to check him out.