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Thanks for your response, Michele.
Denise characterized the background as surrealistic, so I guess maybe I went overboard in putting it in. To me it just seems like an ordinary sundown on the bay with the fog rolling in, but I guess it is distracting. If that's the case I'm going to take a licking, because some of the other paintings that I'm planning to post for critique are even worse in that respect. In fact I just posted another which has probably the least dramatic background of the five that I've done. If I get the same reactions to that one that this self-portrait is getting vis-a-vis the background then I'll have to really moderate what I'm doing.
The good news is that I've got plenty of paint so the fix is fairly easy. I'm not sure what you mean by a plain studio background, but I guess that means basically a neutral wall or anything undramatic. I'd considered a simple dark background like in Denise's painting of Ronald, and I admit that I like the force and impact of that work. I should probably try plain backgrounds digitally before doing anything else to this self-portrait.
I agree with you about taking a lot of shots when photographing. But on this one I obviously wasn't the culprit. My wife took the reference photos, and, believe me, this was the best of the lot. Look what she gave me to work from! LOL!
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