No. 40

I finished no. 40 this afternoon which I consider to be an important milestone, it makes fifty feel like it’s actually in reach.  I know I have a number of redos to do before I’m officially finished, but it still feels great to be able to say that I’ve hit forty.

Today’s portrait went by fairly quickly, I was finished with all of the exacto knife and lithographic crayon in just 2.5 hours.   It’s a portrait that conveys the aftermath of the experience, when the face is completely lacking in facial expression and reads more like a hollow shell which has been through hell. The more time consuming portraits tend to be the ones when an eye or both eyes are squeezed shut or when the lips are doing something very dramatic, causing all sorts of tiny forms and wrinkles in the skin. Here the mouth simply hangs wearily, the eyes have a dead look to them, and the rest of the muscles in the face are completely flacid and passive.