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Hi Joan,
I think you hit on the answer when you said that each painting is different, and it depends on what you want to convey. There is no formula!
When I begin a portrait I always start with a concept. I decide what I want to say visually, and an idea begins to form in my mind. Either I'm painting from life, or I'm using photo references to compose the painting, or a combination of the two plus preliminary sketches. Let's assume you are using a photo because that's what it looks like you are doing.
I first decide on one photo to use as a general compositional reference. This photo has the general pose the way I want it. (I might use others for the head, for the cat, the fingers, etc.) I decide where I want the borders to be, and block out the rest of the photo or extend the photo edge. It's important to leave extra space on all sides. I often extend the background color by using pieces of reject photos. That way I can play with the borders, moving them in and out until I decide how much space I want around my subject. Next, I decide on the head size. I measure the head in the photo and the length of the entire photo. I use the proportion of head length/photo length, cross-multiply with the head length I want in the portrait (6.5"), and fill in the missing dimension, which will be the length of the canvas. Then I figure out the width of the canvas by creating another l/w proportion. I then stretch my own canvas.
If you would rather use a pre-stretched canvas, you can start with the proportion of head length (6.5") to canvas length, then see how the width of the canvas compares proportionally to the width of your reference photo. I mess with the width of the reference to see if I can get a pleasing composition. If I can't, then I do not use a pre-stretched canvas.
What I'm saying is that really it is much better to arrive at your canvas size by making a conceptual/compositional decision rather than trying to determine an ideal canvas size--which doesn't exist.
I like your reference photo a lot--beautiful light, and that green turned out well. It does make beautiful cool shadows, in the cat, too.
Alex
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