Michael and Claudia, drawing and underpainting.

Michael Elsasser and Claudia Monaco are two of the other artists participating in what seven of us have come to call our 'portrait project.' We have agreed to spend a year or so each doing a minimum of two portraits of other artists in our group plus a self-portrait. The end of our year will come in January and at that point we hope to find a venue in which to exhibit our results.

I started my self-portrait and another rendering of Claudia in the spring, but after staring at the canvases for a number of months have decided to start over with entirely new compositions.

Except for Claudia who is a fairly new member of our group, the rest of us met six years ago at the Art Students League in Manhattan in Sherry Camhy's drawing and anatomy class. We have all since moved on to other classes at the League but we now get together for lunch once a month to share progress on our project and swap other stories.

Michael, for example, was just featured in Connoisseur Magazine. An article written by a magazine editor describes first-hand what it's like to purchase a portrait painted by Michael and add it to his collection.