I just know I have come across your name before…but anyway I am just enjoying looking through your website and your posts where you have relayed your adventures with the transfer process as in with Wintergreen oil have inspired me to have another go!! Like you my first attempt didn’t go so well.
Did you get your exchange portfolio back yet? Also are you still going with the self portrait as the theme for your own work? Its just that I came across abook from the National Portrait Gallery in London a few years back when I was still lecturing and it gave a really mind expanding inspirational perspective on Portraits that (if you are still working with this theme) I’d think you’d find inspiring.
Actually I just visited the website of the NPG and couldnt see it in their bookshop. Maybe it was linked to a temporary exhibition they had. It had the \depicted’ portrait subjects represented by objects that related to them or things like e.g. an empty chair ( in relation to a depicted ruler of a country and so on. For archbishop Desmond Tutu, I seem to remember the flags of different countries in Africa and some other significant objects.
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418E1TC03DL._SL500_SS90_.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.amazon.com/Portraiture-Reaktion-Books-Essays-Culture/dp/0948462191&usg=__MV15Ro1HH5ej85tKg67YgCA_UE0=&h=90&w=90&sz=3&hl=en&start=39&um=1&tbnid=wGdCaqqNHJg1GM:&tbnh=78&tbnw=78&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522the%2Bportrait%2Bnow%2522%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1

It was really great. (although I think that this book I just found on Amazon is a more recent version of the boo I had which is now “out of print”.

Aine