This is one of the few portraits I have done where the model has clothing on. Simon is a great friend of mine and a good friend of a past beau. This charcoal piece was drawn while I was cooking a roast, the night before he moved into his new place. It is a reasonable likeness, considering that he had reversed into my little silver car and bent the front fender only a few days before. It has now been some time since we have had any contact…..I think because I had the audacity to ask if he "still hung out with midgets". I felt that his new (and rather height restricted) girlfriend had been a little rude. Simon is a handsome, athletic man and I rather liked him… he just liked putting his pencil in too many pencil cases. I should have known that a remark like that would severely stretch a friendship. Simon, who had  shared his Morton Bay bugs with me at the 'Red Orchid', didn't speak to me  for over a week when I did him a favour once by putting his washing in the tumble-dryer and shrunk his underpants. All of them. I said...and will say again.... I was really, really sorry.