This is, or was, a portrait of William Kyle, who bought many small artworks from me in those fantasyland days of Darkover. Vietnam veteran, re-enactor, collector, fantasy writer, steady frequenter of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and fantasy conventions, I thought of him as kind of a fantasy character of his own. Doesn't he look like Hagrid the half-Giant from the Harry Potter books? In 1997 they were already starting to be published and he might have already read the first one.
Unlike the Hagrid character, William Kyle had a daughter. We saw them at DarkoverCon over the years, and by the time I drew this portrait, she was at least six years old. She looked enchanted, in a pale dress with long, strawberry blonde hair, occasionally climbing up on her dad's lap or snuggling against him, a "fannish" family member raised in the community.
As DarkoverCon grew older, we fans didn't see Kyle any more and he was not there to buy my art or anyone else's. It turned out that Kyle had been convicted of molesting his daughter and had been sentenced to a long time. I believe he died in prison, and no one in our community missed him.
Drawing of Kyle is black tech pen on sketchbook page, 5 1/2" x 8", November 28, 1997.
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