Man's Bust (Black & White)

This piece is one of the very first oils that I painted in my art classes at Converse College.  Art was my major, so every year we had 9 hours a week of studio art.  During our freshman year, we only worked in charcoal, drawing the many statues and busts like this one.  Our sophomore year, we were introduced to oil painting, but, for the first semester, we painted the same subjects, in black and white only, as you can see here.  I was really getting tired of drawing and painting the same subjects over and over again and using very limited materials.  It took me many years to realize how fortunate I was to have had this intense, "old masters" training.