I wanted to get away from the tight, exact, portraits and work on some that are a bit freer. These paintings took me about an hour to paint, whereas the friends and neighbors portraits took about a month to complete.

These were so much fun to do. My friend gave me a book about genetic disorders, most of which no longer exist. These are all painted from some of the photographs in the book, which makes them a bit dark. I've submitted them for a show near San Francisco titled "Sweet and Low" which will focus on the kind of dark but also kind of sweet. We'll see if I get in...

Although these took a huge fraction of the time it took to paint the other portraits, I would like to go back to painting in that style with the photographs from the genetic book. I think it would be interesting to do these in a tighter, more realistic style. I would also like to incorporate some of the looser brush work with the tighter brushwork. I'm not really sure how I would combine the two just yet, but I think that it would be an interesting study.

If not, I'm going to paint a few more and hopefully have a show locally.