Dave is a designer at the Iconfactory and responsible for the ultimate Twitter icon, Ollie the Twitterrific bird, but he broke his foot while playing soccer over the Fourth of July. That means that the poor guy is relegated to staying off his feet at home. Rather than wallow in self-pity, he decided to use the opportunity to keep himself from going completely Rear Window and offer up his design skills to the Internet public.
(See also: Wired, Cnet, TUAW, Gizmodo, and plenty of others.)
Sitting for a portrait over FaceTime was a really strange experience, but David is very friendly and made it a lot of fun. He did two sketches in about ten minutes, as well as taking some screeshots for reference and he later produces the final product in Illustrator. I’m thrilled with the result! (Trivia: Apparently I am the first portrait to have received a pattern background.)
David said he had been overwhelmed with requests as a result of the extensive coverage in the geek press, and was now booked up until December and after then he will decide whether to carry on with more, or not.
You can see many more portraits in his Flickr set, follow @dlanham on Twitter and absolutely check out his website. (He has loads of great wallpapers and icons!)
Post edited 2010.08.16: I received my portrait in the post today, with a bonus sticker. I’ve added a photograph to the gallery at the top of the post. It’s a lovely quality print. I think it looks great. :)
Monster by Mail
Three years ago I ordered a Monster by Mail. Len Peralta takes requests for monster watercolours, and I ended up with this creation:
Amazingly, he still seems to be producing these, and has even broadened the concept with Flipface.
Updated 2013.01.21 to futz with the formatting.
halfblog.net 
Pingback: My pet monster, by Steven Kraan | halfblog.net