Here's something you may find useful. I made the reference and the painting the same size, converted them to monochrome -- and reversed the images. The reversal will help you see the work in a fresh way. It's akin to the old masters' method of checking their work in a mirror to see errors, which is something they did all the time.

What I see in these images is that the brown eye is a bit too light and the blue eye is much too light. However, what jumps out at me even more is the overmodelling in the shirt.

Try this method with the whole painting, and the different parts of it too. It will show you lots of things to change that you will see immediately.

Hi Michelle and all
 

Boy, does Chris look strange backwards! I'll print this out, and work with tomorrow. Thanks!

Chris and Nick came over tonight to view the portrait, Nick immediately ran over to it yelling, "that's me, I'm in the picture, there's Gypsy, how'd you do that"? I love kids, they're so real.

I put Chris right next to the painting, and made some changes in eyes from life, the brown eye is quite light with gold blotches. The green eye is actually more silver and darker that I've made it. I'll post again (the whole thing) when I have good light to photograph it. You're so right about the sweatshirt, it wasn't done anyway. Have made changes to Chris and Nick's hair color (based on life).

Chris shaved his beard off, and is talking about getting his hair cut now instead of waiting for two more inches. Have you ever shaved a painting? Think I'll disown him.

Jean

The whole thing
 

Hi, I've done much on Chris's shirt, and eye. Not done yet, but it's toned down a lot. Please disregard the background, I haven't worked on it since deciding to darken it in areas. Now if I'm lucky, I can still post images.

Jean

Chris up close and personal
 

The X on his shirt is way too evident, so disregard. I'lll be toning it down next. I wish I would have straightened his shirt out, but this is a learning experience, and Chris is my rebellious one. So this is in character for him.

Michele, at this point I don't know how to use all these programs that flip images, etc. I would rather spend my time learning painting and art. Guess I'll get a mirror!

Jean

The faces are both coming along much better now.

Because both shirts are so rumpled, I would drastically compress the value range in both of them, to downplay them much more than is shown in the reference.

I would try to put all the Dad's shirt values into a very narrow middle/dark range and I would put the child's shirt into a middle/light range and drastically desaturate the blue and red decoration on the sweatshirt.

Treating these complex and distracting areas as simplified value masses will strengthen your composition.

Here's an approximation of what I mean:

Hi Michelle
 

I've already started on Nick's shirt. The emphasis needs to be on the faces, not their casual clothes. The only time I've seen Chris dressed up was at my wedding to Tom. Both of my boys gave me away. Chris was gorgeous, does this mean I have to get married again to see him dressed up? Not worth it! Thanks for the time you've spent on this, it's appreciated.

Jean

It's amazing to see how the changes you've made have brought the portrait together.

It looks to me like Nick's head has a bit of a pasted-in look. Putting in the shadow cast by his head onto his shirt, as in your reference photo, would tie them together better.

New background
 

Hi Chuck, and welcome to this forum. You'll find much solid information and inspiration here. And thank you for your comments, I've begun working on Nick's shirt already.

Last night I attacked the background, I must have been nuts. When I got up this morning, I found violet, blue green and ultramarine blue blotches all over the background! Luckily, oil is forgiving and I painted again with a deep blue-black. I still need to incorporate it into the figures. Also started on Nick's shirt. Still need to tone down clothes and work much more on Gypsy. What do you think?

Jean

Nice choice to go with a dark background on this. I agree that you need to incorporate some of this color into the figures.

My favorite portrait artist for "studio" type backgrounds such as this is Simmie Knox who has a site on Stroke of Genius. Check out his work.