Beautiful Dutch girl, no earring
 

I don't want to over-work this, but if there is something I can do to improve it before I put it away, I'd love to hear about it. Yes, it's Sam again.

Thanks a bunch, Janet

Hi Janet,
It's a beautiful piece of work. My concerns are with the color values on the painting. If the photo-shot of the artwork is how it's like in the actual painting, then i would like to say that the right side (our right side) is just as bright as the left side.
Darkening the right face a little would dramatically enhance the painting. Give it some thought and see if it helps. :sunnysmil

Nice - the thing that jumped out at me is the catch light on her right eye -seems too big compared to the photo.

The cools in the original photo are lovely. You have made it quite warm in comparison. That is OK, but i would prefer the cools.
You have captured a good likeness, but I would really zoom in on those beautiful eyes & tweak them to perfection.
You have not quite captured them. - but you are soooo close.
Don't stop. This is quite beautiful.

I really like the way you move the paint.

Hi Janet!
This is lovely.
As for the eyes, I see that you have made the irises just a tad larger than they are in the photo. The top lid on her right eye has an ever so slight point at the top of it's arch in the photo. In your painting it is a perfectly round arch. And the blue of the iris is lighter in the photo. Especially in her right eye.
I also like the way you paint. It feels very loose and playful. Very nice!

Nice painting, you're getting close, but need to be more precise with the shapes of the eyes and lips.

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for your thoughts. I really wanted to make this painting special. I went out for breakfast, then for a little drive in the country, got your input and went straight to work. Phew. At least two hours work and it doesn't look like much at all.

Marcus: I lowered the values in the light areas of her face on the one side a little . Let's call it a compromise. You are right, of course, but I am as yet unwilling to go as far as the photo reference calls for.

Cynthia: The first thing I dealt with was that catch light. I promise that I will never, never do it again.

Tricia: Painting flesh overly warm is a problem of mine that I am working on. I will go some way towards blaming my tools in that I think the original post was too warm. I took the pic on the south side of the house in the shade, this one I took on the north side. Anyway, I am aware of my need to use more cools. Thanks.

Brenda: I worked hard on the eyes. I will look at them again tomorrow. Right now I'm going to work on a landscape. Big brushes. No eyelids.

Michele: Thanks. Please let me know how I did.

Better but still not quite right. Most artists have a tendency to try to level things out, as if the face was straight on, and straight up and down. This is happening especially with the mouth and the near eye.

Michele, yeah I see what you mean. Phooey. I'll work at it this week and try to get it right. Thanks again, Janet

Janet,
I have been working on a portrait and today I had to scrub out the whole face and start the features all over again. Everything was out of wack just enough to make referencing impossible! At least you are very close to your goal. It's the result that matters, after all, not the number of hours we work on it. Can you imagine if paintings in museums or galleries had little tags on them like "had to re-do ear six times" or "the nostrils were impossible"?
You just sounded a little disheartened so I wanted to cheer you up and encourage you.