two self portraits I did a long time ago--

I've been pulling some old paintings out of storage lately, working on them, and even restoring them where needed.

Here are two self portraits I did right after I graduated from Miami.

One was done while I was single and living in my parents empty farm house for the winter. I had just come home from celebrating Thanksgiving with my relatives.....

The other (shirtless with shaving cream) was done a year or so afterwards. It was rendered from a photo I took in the apartment Nicole and I (just married) sublented in Queens, NY.

Enjoy.

Drawings of the kidzz

These "drawings" of the kids were the first pieces I worked on when we moved back to Portland. I felt my drawing muscles had atrophied and was again trying to understand the basics of drawing/painting--dimension, planes, color, and composition.

After I cut the pieces of wood, I let the kids paint or drizzle or do whatever they wanted to the raw wood surface using white gesso, then I proceeded to try and find the portrait within their own drawings/markings. It was fun trying to teeter back and forth between the kids work and mine taking visual prominence.