Grids and drawing chalk

About a month ago I decided to do a copy of Baburen's "The Procuress". This is as far as I've gotten. It's a 40"x 42" canvas with a light gray priming. The original painting is in the Museum of Fine arts, Boston, but I've never actually seen it. It used to belong to Vermeer, and it's in the background, hanging on the wall, in 2 of his paintings. When I was learning to draw, this was one of my inspirations; I liked the large, simplified shapes - it seemed a good way to begin a drawing. I also got the idea of using white drawing chalk on a light gray canvas from him! It might be a little hard to see , but this is apparently how Vermeer started a painting.
I found blackboard chalk to be too coarse and too soft, so I started making my own.Here's how - put one teaspoon of rabbitskin glue size in a small cup and then add another teaspoon of water so you have a size that's half the strength of what you would use to size a canvas or make gesso. Slowly add some powdered chalk (whiting), stopping to mix every now and then, until you have a thick sticky paste. Add more chalk til you get a dry paste, then take it out of the cup and roll it between your hands. Roll it into a cigar shape then fold it back into a ball; repeat a few times until it's smooth like soft modeling clay. If it's sticky, add more chalk. If it's crumbly, add a drop or two of water. Then take small amounts and roll into sticks of chalk and leave to dry overnight.
If it's too soft, use a stronger glue size. If it's too hard, add more water when diluting the size.

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.