Jeanine,

Over the last few days I have been working on her eyes along with a few other things. I took the painting this morning to my photo lab to have slides made.

One other thing I tried to do was to flatten down her right ear. The photo shows a bit of a cab door effect. This has caused a slight departure from the photo on our left. I think the result passes the plausibility test so I've decided to leave it.

There is no need for humility, and I haven't forgotten about the chianti.

Thanks for the look,
Mike

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

No tricks, no fake "cute," just wonderful real life.

Mike, the only thing I'd look at is the reflected light on her cheek on the shadow side (our right). The break of reflected light on her cheek in the reference photo is probably a little strong because her shirt is white. In your painting, the shirt is blue, so wouldn't be reflecting as much light up onto her cheek. Or in other words, maybe smooth transition a little and have less abrupt color break across that cheek, between the creamy pink and the ruddier red. Or not.

Be proud. Wish I'd painted it.

And thanks forever for the father quote.

Tom,

I see your point, I never would have considered that.

I'm tempted to say - I too wish you had painted it, but only tempted.

Unfortunately the suggestions from Jeanine and yourself will not be in my next post of this image. As I said I took it this morning to have slides made and will receive them by week's end. Maybe I was a little hasty.

Thanks to you and Jeanine and all the others for your support. And thanks to Karin Wells for help with the composition.

This is the finished image as photographed to slide, then printed from the slide on 8x10 paper (which ends up almost 8x8), then scanned at 300 dpi, and then reduced to forum size.

And now with some of your ideas incorporated.