Allison

This young woman is so gorgeous, I felt compelled to capture her beauty.

Adding the necklace was fun! You can really go wrong with jewellery if you try to paint it with a lot of detail, just a few fine strokes and a couple of highlights and you are done. Examining some of Sargent's work in this regard is always illuminating.

Allison

I had to repaint much of this today after looking at it for a long time and finally realizing where I had gone wrong. Sometimes it takes a lot of looking to really see where the problem lies!

I neutralized the background and lowered the shoulders a bit to give a more elegant appearance to the portrait.

Adding the necklace was fun! You can really go wrong with jewellery if you try to paint it with a lot of detail, just a few fine strokes and a couple of highlights and you are done. Examining some of Sargent's work in this regard is always illuminating.

Yet another work in progress . . .

All of these paintings were started from sittings.

I am making a few adjustments to the likeness after the fact but trying to maintain the freshness from the initial painting session.

Linda

This is looking much more like my subject, but I can still see lots of changes I need to make!