Looking and Seeing - May 10, 2012

It's been a week of assigned portraits for the short iPad art class that I'm taking with Iris Schencke. What a difficult and wonderful assignment. And of course, I am the only one willing to sit still long enough to complete a painting. 

The first, in the previous post, was sketchy, ethereal, twisted, ancient, and sad. The one I did yesterday is more alive. My husband doesn't care for it, saying I look better than that but there's something I love about a self rendering that flows from one's own hand. I'm able to see the beauty in the unreality of it, in the errors, the overworked areas, the evident strain, even the green smudge. And I just can't help it but those windows of the soul become larger than life.