A Selection of Self Portraits

Some of the old oil paintings I uncovered in the move were still wet to the touch, and of course they had bits of paper and fluff stuck to them.
I really hadn't a clue about the basics of oil painting back then. A wee bit of instruction during my college days might have been helpful, but I suppose pretty much all of my tutors used pen and ink or watercolour.
Here are a selection of self portraits in chronological sequence from the bottom up.
I still quite like some of the early ones. In fact the first one, done when I was eighteen, is the best of the lot.
Isn't that depressing?

An Unfinished Self Portrait

I often advise younger artists to use themselves as models if other models are hard to come by, and when I was younger I found my own physiognomy the most fascinating subject to draw and paint. But now, as I am getting older I find it much more difficult to raise the enthusiasm to do self portraits.
I wonder is it to do with simple vanity or the lack of it as I mature? Now I rarely look in the mirror if I'm not brushing my teeth.
Or is it something to do with the difficulty of confronting what we have become rather than looking at the potential that we all have as youngsters.
Anyway, here's an unfinished self portrait that I managed recently.

Old Drawings from School Days

When I was visiting my mother last week, I dug out a lot of old drawings that she has kept since I was at school.
It was great to see them after so long. These two are from when I was seventeen in 1979.
I had hair back then of course. Lots of it.

I used to do loads of drawings from life then, mostly of myself for want of anything else to draw.
Art teachers mostly had kids drawing boots and cabbages, if they drew from life at all.
I remember that my art teachers, Messers Maguire and McFadden, used to get the younger kids to sit for me. I was lucky with my teachers, they were a couple of good guys.