Jane McGowen as Greta Garbo

Jane McGowen as Greta Garbo

[pencil on paper]

My girlfriend at the time looked enough like Garbo

to give me the idea for this combination portrait

Maureen

Maureen

pencil on handmade paper
[Not For Sale]

Spent a month on this 18x24" portrait of an ex-gf and fellow artist. Friends would come by daily to check on the progress. I used handmade French paper ($5 a sheet in 1970 and more durable like cloth) so I could I erase and redraw as often as needed. I did one eye six times and the mouth four times before getting it all right. Since it's my best portrait (of over 500 I've done), I've never been able to part with it.

Navajo Madonna

Navajo Madonna (large version), charcoal pencil..NFS

This was the first of eight drawings of this Navajo girl (from a photograph by American master Edward Curtis in the late 1800's), and was actually done on watercolor paper, intending this to become a watercolor. I have two remaining, six others are in private collections. She has the most incredible eyes I've ever seen, and "eyes are the window to the soul".

Wise Man

Wise Man, pencil
Framed, glass...$500
(Drawing size: 11x15")

This began as a portrait, then became my idea of a prophet or a sage, a wise man. I've used this one for my holiday greeting cards.

Navajo Madonna 2

Navajo Madonna 2 

small version, pencil on paper....NFS
(From a photo by Edward Curtis)

My guide for these portraits are numerous Renaissance portrait drawings, I have books of these and have spent years studying them.

Street People Laughing

Street People Laughing, Athens, GA (detail)

1969,  pen and ink on paper... $200

These were some homeless guys I would regularly photograph and pay as models. Most lost their jobs, then their wives left them, so their circumstances were not of their own creating. It was during the Nixon years, yet another recession, high oil prices due to an oil embargo, and he implemented wage and price freezes, which just caused prices to skyrocket when lifted. In my lifetime, I can't remember a time of economic prosperity when a Republican was president other than Eisenhower, and even he warned of the "growing power and influence of the military-industrial complex" in his farewell address to the nation.