Hello to everyone and thank you for making this forum such a wonderful resource and meeting place.
I'm a child of the '60's and have wandered down many avenues of life, but always painted if I could. I attended art college, BFA '69, and again (MFA '05) a few years ago. I cannot tell you how different those two experiences were. I sort of levitated through the first degree
and the second almost killed me.
I paint (and etc.) every day now and, although I paint just about anything, portraiture is my first choice. I prefer working from life and ask most people who visit me to sit while we talk. I paint mostly faces because of vision and time issues, but I usually take a photograph for reference in case I want to continue afterwards.
Here are two recent examples of fairly quick (for me!) - 2-5 hour studies:
www.judysimons.com