When I took up portrait painting after a hiatus of many years, I started with very small portraits of children using minimal color.  These eventually developed into larger and more ambitious paintings.  Meanwhile, I noticed mug shots in the local paper of young criminals barely older than these elementary school children.  It seemed to me that it was mostly circumstance that separated these two groups, so I wanted to paint them all as having a common humanity.  It is important to me to convey a sense of the person that I am painting.