Hi Linda,

What a wonderful portrait! The personality of this young woman really makes an impression. I love the gaminish ears, the sparkly eyes and the curvy eyebrows and lip corners. She doesn't look like she's going to sit in that 2-D rectangle for long! I admire your colorful, lively application of paint. Terrific!

Alex

No comment, just applause (and lots of it!) :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Absolutely beautiful Linda. I love the interplay of warm and cool colors in the skin tone. Now it's your turn to tell me what colors are on your palette, although I know that it's not in the paint, but in the skill of the painter.

Alex and Heidi, thank you so much for your generous comments.

Mark, thank you. This is an example of trying to get a cool diffuse north light from life effect in a portrait. I'm not able to get this kind of subtle skin modelling with all the temperature changes unless I get conditions like this. I'm trying to set up photographs that simulate north light as it would fall on a face when you work from life. It's not especially easy to do although bracketing helps - what happens in most photographs is that the lit side tends to dissolve into one light patch and big areas get blown out. (This is what I mean when I keep telling people they are too photographic; the human eye would not have seen the area in the same way.) . I hire models to sit in my studio for me so I get some regular practise with natural light work. When I shoot people under natural north light I usually still have the blown-out-lights problem. This was a commission though, and I ended up shooting my client with a strobe and soft box setup.

I hope this makes sense. This is just one way, and certainly not the only way to paint. I don't do outdoor portraits like this, either.

My palette is pretty much the same (except for the new yellow) as what I used in Graduation Gift.

Linda, que linda! The smile is just perfect. I'd love to see it in person. Oh yeah, you cancelled our plans of meeting, oh, too bad, I would have liked to show you my pastels in person also to see the noses real close, but whatever. Pfffftttt. ;)

Linda this is wonderful, certainly one of my favorites! Wow, you feel like as a viewer you could groom her eyebrows!

Awesome!

Linda, I like your style and I love this portrait!

Oh Linda, I can't say anything that hasn't been said, it is REALLY beautiful!

Linda--

Just checked back in today...

This is Fabulous! My favorite so far. Wonderful color(s) in skin! Wish you'd come teach me how.

She's beeyoootiful.

--TE

Congratulations on a beautiful portrait. I love her eyebrows! Three pages of compliments don't leave much that hasn't been said so ditto to it all, I like it.