Self Portraits and a Bad Idea.

I have no special plans this 4th of July.

My red car is not in any shape for a road trip.



Dad is with the Knights of Columbus.

They always participate in the big Huntington Beach parade.
It can be exhausting.
This year he stayed home and recorded it.

However, after the parade, Dad went with them to one of the Knights house for a get together.

The Knights are very supportive of Dad, and he always has something to do.



Meanwhile at home, I continued working with the mineral coated paper, and crayons.


So far today I've made two self portraits!


The first one I used the same watercolor crayons that I used yesterday.

I started out with a sketch to position everything.

It was going  OK.

In the end I didn't think it looked much like me.

There was something wrong with the eyes.


I decided I couldn't get the right kind of detail with the watercolor crayons, so I tried using regular oil pastels.

I had never really tried making a portrait with oil pastels.


The best ones were the Sennelier's, but I only have a few and not the colors I wanted.

The next best brand was the Cray-Pas.
That set came with a colorless blender which was very useful.


I tried changing position and lighting too.


The next sketch:

I came up with this:

I was sitting in front of a rainbow, batik print curtain.

I used a stick to scratch into the paint.


This one came out looking more like me, but not as nice as my color pencil portrait.

Eventually I will try to do a portrait in paint.



The other day I visited a friend and he gave me some old fireworks.

We used to have big parties at his house and these were left over from long ago.

I planned to share them with other friends, but then I realized what a bad idea that would be!

These fireworks are very old, and will likely explode as soon as the fuse is lit.

I wouldn't want anyone to lose a finger.


Later today I will figure a way to detonate them from a safe distance.