Great job Janet!

I missed this one.

I like this one so much better than the ones you have done from photos. It has life and energy and it's own personal style. Don't worry about the mistakes. Just do lots of them ( self portraits-not mistakes). David Leffel does at least one of himself every year. According to one gallery owner I talked to in Carmel California, it is an honor for a gallery to be granted the right to sell that year's portrait. I have my own opinion on that particular subject.

It is so much better to work extensively from life, even if it is a still life of peanuts, before launching into a portrait career.

Two books I would recommend are "The Practice and Science of Drawing" and Oil Painting Techniques and Materials", both by Harold Speed and published by Dover Editions, available at www.amazon.com.

Too many aspiring portrait artist begin their careers copying photographs and assume once their copy is close to the photograph, they are a skilled portrait artist. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Oh Sharon, thanks so much for your encouragement and unfailing good advice. I have come to so many realizations over the last year and a half about this painting stuff. I am drawing a little bit from life (it's hard to find agreeable models and I do get tired of myself!) and I am painting quite a lot of still lifes and landscapes. I would never dream of taking a photo of the still lifes and painting from it, that would be so difficult... And the landscapes, although they are from photos, I still find myself hiking back to the locations at the same time of day to look at it again and again, as the photos all lie, lie, lie.

So the still lives and landscapes have taught me a lot about painting portraits. And the copying of a photo: the trees have to be tree-ish and that can only come from me; the pears have to be pear-ish and that can only come from me. Yep, the old grouch is learning!

Janet,

I have seen your landscapes on other sites. They are beautiful.

I have to admit that I am a really dreadful lanscape painter, haven't a clue.

Sweet of you to say, Sharon. And odd for me to hear... I painted my first landscape last spring and much to my surprise I seem to do an okay job. Maybe you should give it another shot - you could surprise yourself the way I surprised me. And the research process is like a holiday at a 4 star resort: shlepping around field and forest, blissed-out on nature with a happy dog in tow (or a good horse underneath). A positive lifestyle choice IMHO :) :) :)