Impossible Possibilities

So my dear friends, I promised last time that I would stop talking about my new little puppy and start talking about art that I've been working on... so I'm hoping this post will satiate you for a while!
So I had an amazing time at Erin's wedding! But it was definitely not relaxing, and now I'm back in Halifax and have only one week left of my art school career (or at least for now...) and I have SO much work to do in a short amount of time!
For my upcoming show I've made about 40 small paintings. All portraits of my nearest and dearest. I also wanted to include some larger paintings of the people in my life who are literally larger than life.
The first one was of my sister. My first post contained an image of it unfinished. I've been trying to not show too many images of my work until my show so that the surprise is not blown! The second painting I made was of my Grandma Eaton who passed away a few years ago. The third painting that I literally started and finished today, was of my Dad, who passed away when I was about 7 or 8 years old.

 I chose this photo of him (he's in the lower left hand corner) and I soon learned that this photo was taken on his 30th Birthday. I found it really interesting to work on this painting for two reasons: Mike is turning 30 this year. And the other paintings I've worked on, most of my decisions surrounding image choice and color choice were based on what I thought were characteristic of that individual, or reminded me of that individual. This was a totally different experience.

 Because I'd only known my Dad for a few years, I've had to rely on information gathered from other people who did know him really well. I know he was a goofy guy, and many of the images my Mom had sent to me were of him sticking his tongue out (and if any of you know my sister, you now know where she gets it from!). So it seemed only appropriate that I select an image where he's making a goofy face!

This is a bit of a close up so you can see the line work in the face. I had a bit of difficulty with the mouth. I made some of the recessive teeth a bit gray so that they would fall back a bit. Let me know what you think, and if you guys think I should make any changes or if something looks off.

So my other project from this semester has been my Tactile Notebook. In my class we had to do a research presentation on an artist who maintains a Notebook practice, and I chose Danny Gregory. (www.dannygregory.com). I was really inspired by him because he also has a blog, and has inserted images from his Notebook where he's written an entry about his day, and then written again in his blog about it. His Notebook perhaps may be more personal, but I thought it was a great idea to share the Notebook, so I thought I would do so with you guys!

So these are just images of my Notebook... notice how fat it's already getting and I've only covered a third of the pages in the book! The next few images are pages within my book. I'm not going to say much about them, perhaps you can give me your thoughts, but I just thought you might like to see how different one day is from the next!