Ladies and gents, may I present to you the FO (Finished Object; knitting term..).

I finished the painting two weeks ago, but I have been busy and didn’t feel like blogging. I will skip yet another painting class this week, but I will return at least once, if only to fetch my unfinished painting…

It is not that different from the earlier version. I added a glazing in bluish green and highlighted the white areas after that. The light coming from the left is perhaps more prominent now. I fiddled with some details in the eyes, lips and ears. Nothing drastic. The angle from the viewer’s point of view looks different though, simply because I held the camera in a different angle than last time.

And here is the model in the original photo:

I’m quite happy with the mouth and eyes. They look identical enough. The forehead is a tad too broad. The jaw and cheek lines aren’t quite the same, but it’s an endless task with brushes that aren’t accurate enough. The exact shape of the nose was impossible to tell from my monochrome, bad quality printout picture, hence it doesn’t have much form. The beard is bushier…

I still can’t paint exact replicas of people’s faces, but I think I’m getting better little by little. I was definitely quite fast with this one, mostly because I’d had a long break from painting. I’m happy that I had the boldness to paint it over at one point.

Even though it’s clear to me what should be ‘corrected’ about this painting, the process has come to an end. I can always feel it when I have lost my momentum with a painting and have reached a certain amount of satisfaction with the results. It’s not about getting perfect results, but learning something new and getting a particular image out of your system through painting.

I have noticed that I really, really like Prussian blue when I paint. I don’t particularly like it elsewhere in the world, but it really speaks to me in oil colors. I love the hues you get by blending it with white and yellow. And contrasting it with brown.