After graduating from Portland State, I spent many Saturdays and Sundays in all sorts of weather doing portraits at the Portland Saturday Market (the country's longest running open air craft fair). Although I tried to do each portrait in under 25 minutes, some art takes longer than planned. I used ebony pencils on bond paper and as often as I could I would also sell a mat with tagboard backing which served to protect the drawing and made it look nicer. Back then I cut the mats with a dexter hand held cutter, and looking at some left over mats ten years later I am amazed that they havecleaner cuts than I can do with my $600 Logan mat cutter now. Ah, the power of youth.

The biggest challenge in portraiture is not the capturing of the likeness, but the challenge of chatting it up as you draw in order to have a finished portrait with twinkle in the eyes, not the bored stare of a static body. I improved my social skills as much as my drawing abilities during these times.