Melissa Jayne Curtis: Fine art interviews, life drawing, self portaits and virtue

I received two letters in the mail recently telling me that the two fine art courses which I applied for have shortlisted me to the interview stage. This means I need to bring appropriate work. Monash are asking me to provide 12-15 pieces (paintings) with development work (sketches etc). I don't think I have 12 pieces lying around. I did some figures and need to paint three to seven more paintings, with development work by the 24th of November.

And I'm pretty happy about this because it gives me more reason to live in my studio. Sometimes I feel like I spend too much time in here for no real reason. I always enjoy having a commission to do, projects to finish for a higher purpose rather than my own self indulgence. Every body wins :D

So I've been thinking about painting red heads as I stated previously. I'm a red head and I had an unfinished painting from earlier this year which I decided to work on for the third time.

So it went from this:

To this:(ew I really dislike this one)

To this:

I like this one the best so far. It's not finished, I'd still like to add to her hair, lips, skin complexion and obviously clothing. I'm thinking lace details but I haven't really got time for that :P

The whole point of this portrait was to do a painting about who I am and what I'm about. I wanted to focus on virtue and what I believe the "right" way of living is for me, finding an overall balance between two extremes of two negative qualities.

From wiki:

"For example, courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, confidence the mean between self-deprecation and vanity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

But I don't really know how to go about this. So I'm gonna just share my thoughts here with you and leave it at that for now.

Here are some life drawings I did the other day in the city with a friend. It was a dude! A really skinny one. Not used to working with men. But his bony-ness was lovely to draw.