Monica, Oil on Canvas Panel, 20" x 16"
 

This portrait sketch was done in a 3 hour session. After I got home with it, I spent another half hour working on edges by memory.

Beautiful!
 

This is delightful! You captured so much in so little time. Will you be working on it any more? Any thought to developing the background? It does not connect to the figure.

Your flesh tones are so fresh!

Thank you for your kind comments. Regarding the background, I do not intend to go back to it. My goal in this piece was to develop a finished impression in three hours. The edge work I did at home without the model was merely a punctuation check.

Exciting
 

It is a wonderfully graphical piece. There is a real person in there, but a nice clean finish. Good use of the model as the reference and the artist as the message!

Like Schmid says, It's all in the drawing. If you can work a solid drawing (the color shapes and their position and orientation), you'll have a much better chance of arriving at a reasonable result. We tend to forget the drawing because the task of getting the color, value, comp, etc., is so daunting. Back to the original preocupation. GET THE DRAWING RIGHT, and you'll have much more latitude to screw around and get away with it.