As you can see by the date I signed it, this was painted in 1985, and I just barely finished it (or at least I ran out of spare time to work on it) to my satisfaction. You can see it’s quite a bit cruder than the others, with many more visible brush strokes, mainly because I spent so much time on getting Ms. Presley’s eyes just right. Once again, this is based on a photo from TV Guide, which at one time was a small 3 inch by 4 inch magazine that often had very nice photography.
One of my main motivations for painting was to have a poster-sized copy of some of these pictures, but without the text or other distractions from the subject. I have done this again with other pictures since I finished this one, but due to my lack of skill it takes me a long time to do one of these, plus it takes a long unbroken stretch of time (several hours at least) to get to the point where I feel I can put the brushes down and go to sleep. Given my profession demands (or demanded, I don’t give in quite so easily now) unpaid overtime, often 10-20 extra hours per week, this didn’t leave me a lot of free time to devote to painting. I have somewhat less demand on my time now, but it seems I’ve taken up a new hobby or two, blogging and learning Japanese. And photography, obviously!
At any rate, one day I’ll be able to go back to spending a big chunk of my time painting, along with my other hobbies, probably when I retire. Unfortunately I probably won’t be retiring until about 1 week before I die, so I might get one more in before then!
So, here’s Ms. Priscilla Presley.
Enjoy!
