I decided to start doing some straight painting again, and by that I mean to use only brush, paint and canvas.  Although I have always preferred oil paints to acrylics, I am not set up to do oil painting right now and I am not sure I could tolerate the requisite exposure to toxic substances like I used to do. So, since I have a few tubes of acrylic paint around, I decided to give them a shot. I am not enthralled with the results in this piece; but, as the intent was just to get back into the practice of using strictly brushes to paint, it got me started towards that goal. This piece is 4 inches by 6 inches in size.

I joined another "pick a theme" swap on ATCards.com where I have to create a card for each of the other participants using their chosen themes. I have finished the first card for a person who chose "In the Wild Jungle" as her theme. This is a drawing of a cheetah. I am wondering now though if the cheetah is really a jungle animal or more of a desert animal. When I googled jungle animals the cheetah came up so I figured I was in the right ball park. Hopefully, it will be acceptable even if I haven't quite hit the mark in subject choice. I like these pick a theme swaps because they cause me to draw subjects I would not think of choosing myself. I am not always thrilled with the themes people choose, but it forces me to think about how to give them something they would like to have and be of interest to me as well. The hardest part sometimes is coming up with an image that conveys the theme and also works on the small size of the ATC canvas, which is only 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. Close ups seem to work best. 
Edit: It has been confirmed that the Cheetah is not a jungle resident. That'll teach me to do sloppy research!

Here is my third entry for the self portrait marathon. I have come to the realization that I have no lips.

Another submission for the self portrait marathon.

I decided to join the self portrait marathon at http://crackskullbob.squarespace.com/. Participants are supposed to do a series of self-portraits over the course of the next few weeks. I don't much care for how this one turned out. It doesn't look much like me and I think the blue and green pencil on the black paper gives an eerie and somewhat unsavory look to the whole piece.

I received another Paper Trader's journal (Suze's) and got right to work on doing my spread in it. Her theme is extraordinary women, historical or fictional. The first person who came to my mind was George Sand, upon whom I did a 50 page paper, written in French no less, when I was in grad school.  I always admired the way she lived her life according to her own vision, at a time when few women had any sort of freedom.  I also created a cover and brief biography of George Sand for the spread, which can be viewed at http://pics.livejournal.com/sutospeak/gallery/00047fr4. 

The scan of this drawing is not very good because I didn't think to scan it before attaching it within the book. Once it was in the book, I was not able to get it to lie flat enough on the scanner to get a good scan of it.  Oh well, one gets the sense of what it is like at least.

I've done quite a bit of art work over the past week. Here is one of the pieces that I completed.