Here’s a sequence of images from today’s session. It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to work on this, so I tried to cover a lot of ground today.

Today's palette
I’m concentrating on ‘flesh’ areas today.

Adding details

Darkening the background

The palette after some mixing and other additions.
Looking at the photo, I’m thinking that’s something is not right with the mouth. I’ve discovered that looking at a photo of the painting in progress side-by-side with the original photo on a computer screen helps uncover problems in the painting. I’ll do that to help troubleshoot the mouth issue I think I’m seeing.
Posting a painting in progress in this manner is something of a ‘high wire’ act. I’m assuming that the work will turn out well (what artist doesn’t think that when starting a new piece?). But it could turn out a misfire . . . . I’m interested to see if the blog process contributes to the success of the piece. Stay tuned.
the mouth issue i think really isn’t an issue.
this looks good and could be seen as finished already.
kseverny,
One of the great challenges for most artists is to know when to stop.
I am working on a looser feel for my paintings; I tend to drift to ‘too fussy’. That said, I think this piece could benefit from a bit more work. If I show a detail of the hands, you’ll see they need more work and definition. I think the face is close to done, but, since one of my goals is to capture a likeness, more work will hopefully achieve that without sacrificing the loose feel.
As always, thanks for your comments,
Dwayne