First Efforts

[Michele Rushworth]

At Karin Wells' suggestion I am starting this thread. She wrote in another thread about how she keeps the first portrait she ever did, for sentimental reasons.

I wish I had the first portrait I ever did. It was a pastel of a high school classmate of mine, a girl from India, in a lovely turquoise sari. I have no idea what happened to it, though I'm sure if I saw the drawing today I'd want to hide it from anyone's view but mine.

A couple of years after that I did five separate pastel portraits of myself, my parents and my two siblings which I had framed and gave to my parents. For over twenty years and through two moves, my parents carted those things around, though they didn't display them. (I suppose they looked like the student work they were!)

Recently my parents downsized to a smaller house and asked me if I wanted them back. I said yes. I'm sure the portraits weren't any good but I wanted them for sentimental reasons. I asked my parents, if it wasn't too much trouble, if they could remove them from the frames for me.

They did. They threw out the drawings and when I came over to get them they proudly gave me the empty frames!

[Mike McCarty]

This is the first portrait I ever did. It is of my adopted daughter Jennifer. It's signed in the lower right "Pop" and dated 1984. This portrait now hangs in my bedroom.

The remarkable thing to me is that it's not really that bad. It was a pretty good likeness. I know that I have done scores of portraits since then that are much worse. Go figure.

[Michele Rushworth]

Very sweet and loving!

[Elizabeth Schott]

Michele, I am not sure that this counts as portraiture, but it was of Martha Washington, when I was in the 2nd grade. I was the only one that made her somewhat anatomically correct.

[Michele Rushworth]

The portrait sculptors on this site would certainly say that it counts as portraiture! How nice that you still have some of your creations from elementary school.

[Mari DeRuntz]

Interesting thread!

Here's my first sculpture, done when I was 17, influenced heavily by a trip to the Musee Rodin. My art teacher suggested she get a piece of marble for me to sculpt, but she was easily distracted and I regret she never got around to it.

I should have listened to my nature: we used to skip school and walk around Rome, searching out paintings by Caravaggio, looking for sculpture, architectural detail on buildings, visiting the mournful garden sculpture at the Protestant Cemetery. Lush.

[Michele Rushworth]

Very "Rodin-esque".

It's not too late for you to still become a sculptor. Michelangelo and others worked in many mediums.

[Elizabeth Schott]

Mari, that is really lovely.

I do hope more people post some of their work here, because it is not only fun to see, but find it buried in your house.

I had to post these two. Special stories for another time.