portrait of youth - updated

(Top photo added later), the finished portrait:
The initial sketch with a part of the photo that I am working from. The photo isn't mine to share, so you will have to trust that I have got a good likeness with the brush :-)
The likeness came easily, and I was pretty content at this stage.

I think that the blending of the colours was too smooth, and the features need forming more. It's not easy working from a full face photograph when the features have been flattened by the flash. The photo is black and white.

It's not obvious in my own photograph below, but here I have used much bolder colour to bring some life to the painting. The colour in the background has sapped it away, and it is better to learn that now, not later. In the last two photographs above it is really easy to see why so many artists leave portraits floating on the white canvas.

I want a dark background to bring her fair hair over, although in blocking in the hair and the background I seem to have lost some of the likeness.
I think that is because she is a sunny person, fresh and innocent at 14 years old, and I need to catch the lightness of her personality in paint. I had the lightness in the sketch, and need to recapture it in the final paint applications.

The portrait is approximately half finished.

Later: progress

I see that I need to balance the hair on the left side, it didn't get the lengthening strokes the right hand side has. The blouse needs a button, even though it doesn't show in the photograph. Time to down-size my brushes for some detail, after contemplating them over a coffee!
The wet paint doesn't photograph well and isn't quite as red-orange as it looks here. The hair is not as grey as the camera suggests - I have that problem myself!

The freckles? Well, they don't show on the original photograph but the gentleman has requested that I paint them in. I researched a few images on line and found these that best matched his description.

I need to soften off the contrast around the eyes, and perhaps modify the tones I have just added. Nearly finished.

Time for another break.

It's amazing what coffee and painkillers can do!

And now it's time to say goodnight...
(Photographed at night. The real colour is somewhere between the two versions; the painting is not quite as yellow/gold as this).

Today I am grateful for my work.