I have never done a self portrait and I don't feel very comfortable painting people yet. Most of my creations have been about fantasy, still life, landscapes, and animals. Since this is my first self portrait I am happy with the results, except for my nose. The nose was hard to catch the likeness of my own. I may work on the nose a bit more but I am afraid to touch anything in case I screw it up. I already scrubbed the paint off the nose once and the paper can't take much more stress. That's the difference between mixed media paper and good watercolor paper. Good watercolor paper can take a lot of stress.

More practice is needed drawing people because I was very nervous and tense painting this picture. Kinda like going someplace I've never been before. You have all these expectations and then you finally get there and it's nothing like you imagined. I've avoided drawing people because I find nature and fantasy fun and easy.

In an age when the industrial revolution was making mass-produced goods available, it also seemed to be increasingly making them ugly and diminishing the role of the artist/craftsman in society. Art Nouveau was a revolt against this ugliness and there is a strong social component to the work that we no longer see.