Portrait Sketches

Despite my cat commission, life goes on in the portrait world, too. Here are a couple of portrait studies, color sketches on canvas panels. The male is on a 14x11 panel, the female on a 12x9. Each photo is a bit different from the colors in the studio.

Neither is completed yet, although the painting of the woman is pretty close. Each of these has been challenging in its own way. The male portrait is from two life sessions plus a reference photo, but needs a bit more work. The female portrait is a posthumous one, and done from a black and white reference besides, which is always difficult. Looking at them here online it could almost be that the reverse is true. I'm uncertain why that should be, except that the value contrasts are a bit stronger in the posthumous photo reference than in the male portrait, done in the studio, where the direction of light made the sitter's face look a bit flat. Clearly there is more to do on the central areas of his face, particularly to enhance values and color. Since there's more to do on each, so stay tuned to see what the final outcome will be.