Watercolor and watercolor stick on Arches CP 140lb, 9x12". Julia is a friend's friend...a photographer, a jeweler, and she also just opened a gallery in the heart of L'viv, the creative capital of Ukraine. She is one of the best friends of my best friend, and lives infinitely closer to my best friend than I do. In a way, she is what I could have been had I not left for the U.S. seven years ago. Only I wouldn't smoke.

I painted this instead of her face for two reasons: because this picture tells something about her that her face would not and because her face is my portrait-a-day 25. Enjoy, and don't smoke!

P.S. I will be traveling on Thursday or Friday and then visiting family and friends up in Sacramento, so may not be very diligent about the blog in the next two weeks.

Oh, and did I mention that I LOVE painting from black-and-white photos? About a third of the portraits-a-day were painted like that. And I just found out about a blog that does a bi-weekly challenge for painters who want to do just that, add color to black-and-white pictures: http://colormechallenge.blogspot.com/