I am 55 years old and live in Wintersville OH. I am a jeweler by trade and started at the jewelry bench at the age of 17 in my home town of Brazil Indiana. Water colors and Acrylics are primarily what I use now but oils is what I had started on when I was about 12 years old. I took lessons from Joe Trover who was a noted painter in Indiana. I have changed my style quite a bit since then and self tought from there. Reading and reference material is my friend. I have always been mesmerized by portrait painting but have done very few that I was happy with. My Avatar is from a while back and I worked on that one for a long time. The artist Helen Van Wyke was the first artist, threw her show that got threw to me on color temperature and all the right and wrong ways of using them.