I had often considered collecting a handful of shells that washed up on a beach and organizing them by shape color, and then putting them into a picture. Thankfully, I didn't even have to go to the beach since there were plenty of shells in a drawer under a glass-top table. I organized them by shape and color, then I deduced that there were primarily white shells, a black background, and a few red, orange, and brown shells. I had initially wanted to make the shape of a ghost (ghost out of shells), but I had to accommodate the red shells, so I chose to add a tongue. When I searched images ("ghost with tongue") for inspiration, I came across [King] Boo, the ghost from the Mario® games. I didn't want to do something so strictly geometry-based (circles, triangles, etc.), so I then sought images of a skull with a tongue. I came across an image of a person with makeup resembling that of Gene Simmons, and decided to make that the subject of the grid project. It was surprisingly hard to find a picture of Gene Simmons' face with makeup in closeup, but I found a painting of it. If I had a better angle and a more calm, gentle hand (it is, but not enough for this), I could have done better. I figured the smallest unit would be something like the smaller sand dollars, thus meeting the 30x30 rule. I used an app on my phone to view a comparison of the two, lining up the eyes and tongue.