I was having huge trouble deciding between the grey and blue hair, but at this point I suddenly had this idea of Finnelan being a Vedalken instead of a Human, and they have blue skin so that threw off the whole consideration again. But I ended up sticking with that so it was a pretty important step in his design process, in retrospect!
There was also another interesting aspect to this, namely that I spent a long time refining this rendition of his face and head shape. I had a photo of a real person that I really wanted Finnelan to look like, but I'm not a portraitist so it was very difficult for me to get there.