shadow details and clothes

of course painting the nuances on clothes takes a while on a bigger canvas . . . also playing with lightening the shadow side of his face a bit.

break from the face

been overthinking the face so spent today on the suit and foliage: still need to fix chin and tonal stuff on the face though . . .

and slow pushing on

 Happy now I've got the overall lines sorted to get involved in playing with the light and shade and alsothe structural elements (eg jawline) of the face.

Remembering the magic mirror

Couldn't quite work out why A's face as a whole was not working (I'd been happily painting away at individual features, then linking them together, but something wasnt working.
Dug out the old mirror from behind a load of stretchers and voila, had a nasty shock looking at him via the mirror, and then looking at him and one of the reference photos via the mirror it was immediately obvious that his forehead was too narrow and jaw too wide:  I'd  been painting him as if he was completely vertical, whereas he's actually tilting his head forward a bit, so at an angle.Trying to make everthing vertical meant his eyes were slightly off, (needed to  be not horizontal themselves and with each other), same with the mouth and the nose.

So, what looks like minor changes took the studio day today to do, so now he's all set up right and all I need to do is remember not to start painting vertically again . . .

Oh and I roughed in the shirt and tie so I could feel I was doing something more than just correcting a few weeks' worth of mistakes!

 still need to work on the eyes (LH one needs tilting right more. RH one needs something that I'll work out when the other's done)