Hi all! I've been an artist all my life, but rarely made a living doing it. Most of my work now is in soft pastels, though I still do some charcoal work, some sketching and a watercolor or acrylic or two every now and then.

I am also working on my first comic book work in more than 20 years, drawing a four-page strip for a writer friend of mine.

You will mainly find me hanging out in the Pastel forum, though you can also see my work at my website or on Art Conspiracy.

This is a life-sized self portrait I did last year mainly using NuPastel and Unison pastels on butcher paper. I never worked this large before, but found that I really liked it and want to do a few more seven-foot paintings.

Retha,

    I find the butcher paper in art classes; they usually have large rolls of it. I am also looking at the Wallis pastel paper which comes in 9 yard rolls. While the butcher paper is a cheap as you can go, the Wallis paper is between $250-$295 a roll, but unlike the butcher paper is will last forever.

-Barry