Self-Portraits, Then and Now

The first one is from 1996. The second one is from today. So what's changed since 1996?

I cut my hair (and dye it now.) I got married. My mother died (in 2000.) The twin towers. I had a baby (in 2003.)

I stopped drawing for awhile there, though I was doing some wild abstract paintings. A few months after Madeline was born, I wrote a picture book. A few years ago, I bought myself a new set of rapidographs. And a bunch of woodless pencils (my favorite kind of pencil!) and a few china markers (hard to unravel.) So I'm drawing again.

But what else is different? I feel like I hardly know that bold, confident young woman from 1996. Before all that crap happened. Before I spent so much time worrying about my parenting skills, or lack of. She looks so carefree.

I am not carefree. But I do have my set of rapidographs and a brand new bottle of ink.

And I've written a bunch more books. And I am more likely now to go to conferences and talk to people I don't know. I am more able now to send my stories and drawings out into the world and greet rejection letters with a 'that's okay; I'll just keep trying." I am more able to say "I'm an artist." Because I really am. So maybe this is the new, bolder Constance, after all. The one who is writing a blog in 2010. Which is something I never would have done (technology notwithstanding) in 1996!