The First Issue Books and Antiques

Backgrounds White

Starting a Background Check With a Phone Number

Running a background check is simple through online search companies. Simply a last name and city are enough to access all kinds of information about a person, from property histories to criminal records.

Sometimes, though, you need information about a person and the only thing you have is a phone number, culled from persistent hang-ups, a half-remembered note, or an unknown number in your caller ID. That phone number can be all that’s necessary to get begin a background check.

When checking out a person based on a phone number, there are two steps. First, do a reverse lookup on the number to get the name, then, if necessary, use the name to run a background check. Both reverse phone lookups and background checks can be run near-instantaneously using an online search company.

Step 1: Reverse Phone Lookup

An unknown phone number is unexpected and irritating. It may be an unknown caller calling several times over several days, someone who won’t leave a message or answer the phone when you call back. That unknown number leaves you with the question: why?

 

The first thing you do may be to use an online white pages to look up the number. Odds are, however, that a standard online directory is not going to return a name. Performing a reverse phone lookup can be surprisingly tricky because millions of phone numbers, the majority issued, are not available in a standard phone directory.

·        Roughly 65 million households (60%) have unlisted phone numbers

·        Only a fraction of the 233 million cell phones is listed, and all cell phone directories are voluntary.

·        Many internal business lines, ranging from offices to call centers, only publish their main number, not individual internal numbers.

Additionally, published phone directories (and, therefore, the online white pages which rely on them) are only updated once a year. Considering that about 20% of people move every year, it’s likely for the directories to get out of date long before their next publishing cycle. Even the US Census Bureau reckons that as few as 35% of public directory listings are accurate year over year.

Professional search companies are invaluable for reverse lookups because their datasets are not based on public directories. Professional search companies make millions of otherwise inaccessible phone numbers available.

Step 2: Background Check

Frequently, a reverse lookup is only the first step to figuring out who is calling. A name is only half of a person’s identity; the other half is their history. If you still don’t know who is calling, even after getting their name and address, consider following up the reverse directory with a background check.

A background check requires a name and city, information received already with the reverse phone lookup. A background search reviews county, state, and federal public records and specific types of private databases to paint its history, covering a wide range of information for financial, criminal, and personal information:

·        Property ownership and asset values, including current home values

·        Aliases and other known nicknames

·        Relatives, neighbors, former roommates, and known associates

·        Bankruptcies, tax liens, and civil judgments

·        Marriage and divorce records

·        Birth records

·        State criminal search, including charges, arrest files, and sentencing

·        Complete address and phone histories

How you use a background report depends on the circumstances surrounding the initial calls. The reverse search and background history together can tell you whether the person was a cell phone or landline, an individual or a company. Past that, background reports highlight relationships between people by showing the names of near neighbors, known roommates, and family members, along with past marriages, divorces, and much more.. It sheds a bit of light into their financial situationand their behavior.

The reverse lookup gives the who is calling. The background check information is the starting point for answering the why they are calling.

About the Author

US Search people search and background check services provide accurate information, which helps customers make informed decisions.http://www.ussearch.com

Lighting a White Background

Pencil Portrait Drawing Tips on Backgrounds

Backgrounds are useful in enhancing your vision of how you want to represent your subjects. Backgrounds can soften the presentation or make it more energetic or dramatic.

However, whatever you do, make sure that the background works with the subject and not against it. Also, do not forget that the subject is the reason you starting the drawing in the first place. So, do not get caught up in your background to the point where it starts outshining your subject and diverts the attention of the viewer from your subject.

Here are a few tips on how to proceed with backgrounds so that they become a plus for the finished product:

* Values - Take a clue from the values of your subject when choosing the value scheme for your background treatment. If your subject is very light on one side, it is always a good idea to make the background in that area darker. This will introduce the necessary contrast.

It also solves the problem of white against white. For example, if your subject has white hair, it is always difficult to make it sufficiently show against the white background of your white paper. Introducing a darker background around the hair is the perfect solution. This, of course, also works in reverse. If your subject is dark, you may want to contrast this with a light background.

* Lost and Found - The background treatment can also be used to produce so-called “lost and found edges”. These are edges that initially show but then get lost in the surroundings to finally reappear somewhere down the line.

The disappearing act of the edge is accomplished by rendering the edge and the surroundings with the same value. For example, the edge of a sleeve could be partially lost in the background by giving the background the same value as that part of the sleeve. Lost and found effects are always interesting and involve the viewer in the process of completing the drawing.

* Location - It is usually a good idea to keep the shading below the eye level of the subject you are drawing. Shading above the eye level tends to weigh down the subject and does not add to the crispness of the portrait.

* Extensive Background - Sometimes your client may insist on a detailed pictorial background. First, make sure you increase the fee, because you will often spend more time on your background drawing than on the subject itself.

Second, always be aware that the subject must remain the focal point of the finished product. So, develop the facility for judging what enhances the subject and what detracts from it. The background is invariably secondary to the subject.

Ideally, a pictorial background should talk about your subject and give the viewer more information about your subject. A background is also very useful to create or enhance a mood. If your subject is portrayed in a certain mood, you may want to enhance that mood by adding the appropriate background.

About the Author

Remi Engels, Ph.D., is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter. He is also the author of a popular Pencil Portrait Drawing Course. Get Your Free copy here: Remi's Pencil Portrait Drawing Course while supplies last.

Portraits with Backgrounds $29.98 PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS Portrait of the Queen of Naples PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS by CATHERINE BARJANSKY in collaboration - with ELINORE DENNISTON ISFew York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1947 This book is for Michael, My son and my dearest friend CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PERSPECTIVE i II. A LEGEND IN A VAX 5 III. BACKGROUND WITH FIGURES 15 IV. SHADOWSAND LIGHT 25 V. A PHANTOM QUEEN AND A TORRENT OF Music 3 3 VI. A ROMAN SPRING 43 VII. SCULPTURE AS OUTLINES 55 VIII. CHIAROSCURO 65 IX. DREAMERS AND CREATORS 79 X. A LATE LARK SINGING 93 XL ONLY ONE HAPPINESS 105 XII. CURVED LINES 115 XIII. OF PALACES AND KINGS 125 XIV. A QUEEN IN A PARK 135 XV. PORTRAIT OF A KING 147 XVI. SOME CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORS 159 XVII. EINSTEIN IN WAX 171 XVIII. DANNUNZIO, A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 179 XIX. PAGES FROM MY SKETCHBOOK 191 XX. THE MIDDLE DISTANCE 203 XXL THE PALETTE 213 CHAPTER ONE PERSPECTIVE THE people who move through the pages of this book have been encountered in many countries of the world and in many societies. I modeled them in wax, and now I have tried to sketch their portraits in words. The quick and the dead for some of them are gone, as the world of which they were a part is gone though some of them must live as long as our civilization exists. The backgrounds that gave these portraits their perspective have faded, for the most part, reduced to rubble and dust and chaos. In a normal world, a world at peace, changes are so gradual as to be imperceptible. But Europe as I saw it lies in ashes. It exists only in the memory of those who knew it and walked its vanished streets. Much of it was beautiful, some of it contained the seeds of its own destruction. There may be people who can sum up the past and divide it into neat categories, but I am not of their number. Living is a more complex process than that, and for the creative artist it is a long search, a continuous striving. The past for me, like all existence, is a series of pictures and a mass of color, most of it orchestrated by great music. It is not my task to analyze the importance of the genius of Albert Einstein, nor to estimate the value of dAnnunzio and Madame Colette as writers, nor to criticize the sculpture of Antoine Bourdelle and Carl Milles. That will be done more successfully by their biographers. It is not as a critic nor as an historian that I have drawn these portraits of kings and com 2 PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS moners, of musicians and sculptors, of writers and scientists it is as an artist. Are they true portraits No portrait in the world, whether painted on canvas, modeled in clay or wax, or chiseled in marble, is entirely true, for it always consists of two elements the per sonality of the model and that of the artist. At times one of the two personalities dominates the other the model may be so vivacious that it cannot be expressed, or so reserved that the artist cannot reach it. I once saw the composer Vincent dIndy sitting for Antoine Bourdelle in the great sculptors studio...

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