100 Faces

About 2 years ago, driving home from work, I was listening to an interview with a poet who just got published. He had a project of writing 100 poems. You had to write at least 100 poems to consider yourself a poet, he had been advised. I had been thinking about portraits as a source of income for a painter; so I came up with the idea of painting or drawing 100 faces to consider myself a portrait painter.I'm starting to get serious about this, but I'm going to have to add every face I've ever done to complete my collection of 100 Faces.

To begin my collection here's a charcoal sketch of Queen Nafatiti done from a plaster cast. I was 16, in art school, my first try was very awkward, then I got into drawing mode and did this one - I could draw!

Here's 2 more, painted last week, underpaintings in black and white. I think I like this method, but I haven't done too much of it. The one is St. Michael after Veronese. The original painting was cut up into 4 pieces - this was the last fragment found. The other is my friend Rick, from a picture he took of himself hiking the Appalachian Trail (yes, from Maine to Georgia). I used a light grey canvas and put in the drawing with white chalk( an old method) and used a grid to transfer the drawing.