I'm proud to say that this one is all finished.  It was 3 weeks of work + a lot of sketching and compositional studies.  I didn't end up doing an oil sketch for this one, but I probably should have.  
​  I'd never attempted a painting this large (32" X 24")  and this complex, but I'm very happy with the final finish.
  I'll be shipping this along with some signed prints of "The Butterfly" to Dog & Horse Fine Art within the next few weeks.  I still have to varnish this one also..

  So close to finishing this one.  I don't want to go overboard on the background with the detail.  My initial thoughts were to have a mosaic of glowing leaves behind the golden retriever and I want to stay true to my first ideas.  I'll sign it and call it finished at 95%.

  ​I have to write a post about how much I truly love skateboarding and everything that it has taught me.  I'll preface by saying that I'm not a great skateboarder by any means.  I have the basic tricks down, but I'm far from an expert.  I've loved skateboarding for a long time, but it's this naivety that allows me to be so happy if I land a trick.
  I went skating today down my local street and ran into a friend who also skates.  We're about equal in skill level so we tried to jump (ollie) over some curbs.  The curb in the video below was fairly high and had a patch of grass that we were trying to land on. I kept rolling up to it, trying to ollie onto the grass, but I couldn't commit to the jump.
  In skateboarding of any level, it's all about psychological commitment.  There's a moment right before you do something where you say: "I'm going to land this or I'm going to bail."  And this moment of clarity is extremely zen.  It took me  a while to build up the guts to jump over the curb.  And when I finally landed one, I realized that I could roll through the grass onto the sidewalk.  Also, once you land a trick, it's as if a switch is turned in your brain and you feel like you could land it anytime you want.  
  The satisfaction that consumes me when I land a trick is based on the fact that skateboarding is scary.  Even doing a small trick like this one in the video is terrifying.  There's something so rewarding about conquering small fears.  I also feel it more deeply because I'm at a low level of skill with skateboarding.  
  As for painting, I still find satisfaction in my work, but it's harder and harder to come by.  And with painting, it's also more of a drawn out process with no physical prowess involved.  
  For a guy like me, I need the yin and yang balance between skateboarding and the sedentary pose of painting.  In some ways I learn more about painting by skateboarding and more about skateboarding by painting.  I hope to do both for a long time. 
  

  I've written about self portraits before, and every time I paint one, it acts as a stepping stone to see how far I've come.  I don't know exactly, but I think I've painted about 12-15 finished self portraits.  I did a lot of them when I was in school because I didn't always have a model to pose.  
  Before my most recent one, the last self portrait I did was when I was a senior at Penn and I was 22 years old.  It came out very well and I think it took me about 3 weeks to paint.  I have it hanging above my bed and I look at it every day.  It marks a very happy period in my life and I'll keep it forever.  Every painting I do is very dear to me and makes me sentimental when I look back at them.  
  In the two years that are between these two self portraits, I've learned many things.  The reason for my growth is because I've painted a lot of paintings.  Some of them are pretty bad, but I've done a lot of commissions that I'm super proud of.  
  I'm starting to learn that the materials, technique, palette and everything are all secondary to the great poetic theme.  Of course, I value technique immensely, but it will always be subservient to the theme.  And the truth is that my technique is really simple and I use a fairly basic palette.  A lot of my paintings may look very realistic, but they actually aren't.  Aside from doing portraits, I don't like realism; even my most accurate portraits are idealized.
  The other main thing that I've learned is how important tonal arrangements are in a painting.  I sum it up in the follow order of importance:  Line -> Value (tone) -> Color.  It may be my colorblindness, but I place a great deal of importance on the value.  
  I keep learning every day, I paint almost every day and I'm still addicted to it after 10 years.

*See pictures below..