This shot is a scene from the 2001 film Serendipity in which Kate Beckinsale’s character (Sara) had been ice skating with John Cusack’s character (Jonathan) and when they both fall, they retreat to a park bench. As a result of the fall, Sara acquires a scrape on her arm which Jonathan applies a bandaid to and proceeds to tell her about a star constellation he finds in the freckles on her arm (and “connects the dots,” so to speak — which explains the pen he’s holding here in the photo). I started this picture somewhere around November or maybe even October, 2004 as a Christmas gift for my wife, Amy. At first, I wasn’t happy with it and intended to either scrap it altogether or finish it for Valentine’s Day. But I picked it back up shortly before Christmas and decided to finish it, but now had barely enough time to get it done. In the early hours of Christmas Eve, I sat down and watched Elf and Santa Clause 2 as I worked on it until I finally finished it at 6:23 AM on Christmas Eve morning. And as an example of my inability to accept any picture as truly being finished, I picked it back up hours before giving it to her on Christmas Eve (as I was framing it) and tried to rework some of it.
Years later, I popped it out of its frame, found a high res copy of the original photo and reworked it. I love how it turned out 🙂
Purchase link for prints of the new version:
https://johndibiaseart.com/drawing-print-of-scene-from-serendipity-feat-kate-beckinsale-john-cusack
