"Painting is jealous, and requires the whole man to herself."

— Michelangelo

(How true it is! And he wasn't even a painter!!)

Vinnie,14"x11" oil on linen

For the first session after the winter recess, Marcin Sulewski was to pose for the group, but unfortunately, he didn't return to school for the Spring term. Instead, Vinnie, who was scheduled for the following week, volunteered to pose in Marcin's place.

Before the pose was set, Brian Skol suggested the use of a blue-green drapery for the background, and that worked well to balance the red sweatshirt Vinnie was wearing.

I didn't want Vinnie's thick black glasses frames to be too dominant in the painting, but at the same time, that is how Vinnie looks. The same is true of his hair; I didn't want it to become a distraction from his face, but that is how he is known to us. So I decided to go with the way his glasses and hair look–quite prominent and wildly unkempt. I did add the reflecting lights on his glasses in order to avoid their looking lensless, although they weren't visible from my angle.

As the session moved on to the second hour, Vinnie grew increasingly uncomfortable sitting still. The painting seems to show his growing anxiety from physical discomfort and lack of nicotine intake. One side benefit of students posing for each other is that they get to appreciate the difficult work our models do for us.