Perhaps nearly, possibly the final version of the portrait....

I have canvassed the opinions of family members on this portrait and they think it is best to leave it alone now.

 I am still worried by the Ninja Turtle mask effect around the eyes, making the subject out to be a heroin addict.

Ah yes, I have even forgotten to crop these photos .

This landscape is coming along. 

The foreground grassy field will give me cause to think. It's just green, isn't it?

Two landscapes

This is a familiar view, based on a watercolour sketch. There is to be a large diagonal shadow spreading across the field upwards from the right.

This painting is based on a photo I took during a walk recently over near Hungerford. It is almost abstract in the stark quality of the shapes.

Lots to do here.

Is this the final version? Who knows?

Now, what do we think?

The face shape was not right: too narrow, so I moved the ear further to the right and expanded the jaw line . This caused colour matching problems with the cheek , which has to be rectified but I am happier now with the face shape.

Stage 274 of the oil portrait

Where am I going with this?

The proportions are becoming distorted as I struggle with details.

Eyes are yet to be mastered, the background is undefined, the end of the nose is too pinched and I think the chin has become too small - but I can fiddle on with this for ages yet!

Rubbisher and rubbisher

The top portrait is stage 1, the bottom portrait is after I'd refreshed my palette and come up with an unflattering orangey hue, that I will now have to go over, thus putting out all the tonal values. I will have to start again from scratch, in effect. In real life, the orangey tone is not so pronounced -  it's more a result of poor photography.

I altered the nose - to its detriment - and generally played about making things worse.

alla prima suits me best

If I feel I have only half an hour to paint, I paint with looseness and purpose and the results , as shown here, have a certain vitality. This is the first oil portrait I have attempted and so far, so good. I was using up what colours remained from my still life so now I either try to replicate the same colours ( because my old palette is now cleared of paint) or I use a different palette of colours and I paint over the fresh brushstrokes that are adding to the effect in the portrait. 

Perhaps the moral is: Use a fresh palette of paints for each work. This was probably Lesson 1 in a course I didn't do.

Stages in an oil painting - 6. The final cut.

Can you see these anaemic lemons?

I have spent a lot of time trying to make them look convincing, adding paint, wiping it off again, adding more paint and the picture below shows how I finally left them: still, perhaps, not dark enough in the shadow areas....

The apple in this final version, I can see now, is less apple-like than before. It has lost its dark red apply hue and turned amber. Ah well.

The ladle is ok.... but that apple....