Steve Jobs: Introduction to Portrait Sketching - Draw in Real-Time

"JUST ONE MORE THING!"

This is a loose illustration of one of my heroes, done quickly over coffee a few days ago. The idea is to capture the focal point and main attributes of the subject. Courtroom illustrators (where cameras are often not allowed) and magazine illustrators are experts at this type of art.

Steve Jobs (deceased) was one of history's greatest polymath geniuses, entrepreneurs, inventors, and materials artists. He co-founded Apple Computer (the world's largest company by capitalization), he founded PIXAR (who captivated adults, and not just kids, by cartoon animation), and he founded NEXT Computer (which was bought by Apple when he came back on board...The NEXT operating system became the OS for Mac). When he returned to Apple (after being ousted by John Sculley the CEO he had hired away from PepsiCo), he dramatically turned the failing company around.

Very unusually and with an incredible corporate vision and trusting his hyper-sensitive intuition and in the absence of focus groups, Steve identifed technology products and services in new market segments which customers didn't even know thay wanted or could use in so many varied ways: Macintosh desktop micro-computer; WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get", user interface (including the interactive "mouse"); iPod portable music player; iPad; iTunes; iPhone (world's first smartphone); WOW product launches (including his famous closing, "Just one last thing!); Apple retail stores; curved architectural glass; and the spaceship-like Apple Head Office still located in Cupertino/CA. He worked hard at making these products user-friendly and accessible to all. He was a very hard driver...of himself and others...and, ultimately, he believed that this extraordinary dedication, commitment to excellence, and the stress associated with turning around and running Apple and running PIXAR at the same time caused his fatal cancer. Steve was also a committed family man...He cleared his head and developed many of his ideas by walking the streets of his leafy, non-gated neighbourhood. The world was poorer when when it lost Steve Jobs at the age of 56!

Steve's wife, a brilliant person in her own right and using her MBA/business acumen, has become one of the world's most responsible philanthropists.

These true geniuses come along very seldom. Steve Jobs is one of the very few people I ever looked up to.

I've attached a video of the presentation Steve made a short while before he died. He summoned the energy to make the presentation to the Cupertino Municipal Council about Apple's plans for its new Head Office. As you will see that even in his ailing condition, he was a spellbinding storyteller and salesman...It was often said that Steve could create a "Reality Distortion Field" and get others to believe in his visions! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M

This is an in-depth interview/discussion with Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook (Apple CEO; first and only CEO of a multi-national to declare, in his low-key manner, that he is gay), and Jony Ives (Apple's former long-standing Head Designer and, arguably, Steve's closest friend) about Steve, his values, aesthetics in life and business, making moral business choices (because it's the right thing to do!), and his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdvzYtgmIjs
Walter Isaacson, as he has with other great historical personalities, has written an excellent biography on Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.ca/Walter.../dp/1982130423/ref=sr_1_1...

Anyone visiting the San Franscisco area should consider a side trip to Cupertino in Silicion Valley to visit the Apple Head Office campus...which is set up to handle tours. It's absolutely world-class, innovative, stunning architecture!..the epitome of architecture as art.

I am 74 and a life-long learner.

© Brad Atchison 2023