Writing 2 or more blogs gets a little confusing. http://moltobrava.blogspot.com – My life as a story- is supposed to be about living in Pisticci in general and this blog started as more of an art blog on making a living here as an artist. Sometimes there is an overlap.

This summer I worked on commissions till the beginning of August and then I did a double portrait which was to be a gift, but the rest of the time I have been trying to do other things to recover my enthusiasm – and by the way- increase my skills. So I got round to sketching in the Piazza and will probably carry on doing that as it was fun to challenge myself with something new. That is the great thing about painting and so on -it’s impossible to ever to reach a point where I could say -“well, I can do that now, so I am bored”. There is always something that I think ,”I really should give that a go “.and then the next thing…….

Having taken an older oil painting out of its frame because I needed the frame for a new painting I decided to get out my oil paints -hidden at the bottom of a cupboard- and see if I could fix some of the things I didn’t like . Am not sure that I made much difference but as I had paint left over I thought I would do a self portrait (time limited) in oils. It’s not pretty but I am very happy with the colours (used my version of portrait limited palette- black, white, red , yellow and prussian blue.) And I like the composition – more luck than good judgement . But most of all I like the “something about it that gets me”. Not very eloquently put but maybe you understand. None of my friends like it but part of my reason for painting a self portrait was to please myself and I succeeded in that. I think after painting a lot of portraits this year I was so fed up of having to please other people (only right because they are paying for it) that it was a treat to just please myself.

I have now taken several more photos to use for my 50 people of Pisticci project (http://studiobasilicata.wordpress.com) and am quite keen to finish that. Have about 20 more pencil portraits to do.  It will be interesting to see the progression in my drawing from beginning to end. I am being more aware of lighting and getting my subjects relaxed in the photograph. Just had a thought that maybe , sometime in the distant future I could- just possibly – draw 50 people from life…….that’s what I mean about there always being something more.