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I hate to be the carny who puts the brakes on a thrilling roller coaster ride, but -- Whoa! Slow down! We're barreling along so quickly toward completion here, with so many advices from so many viewpoints, that everything's becoming a blur.
Beth, you've just said two things that impel me to buy another ticket to ride. You said that the arm may be wrong, but it's too late now to change it. NO, NO, NO! (And especially in oils.) If something's not right, STOP. Look again, critically and analytically, and figure out what you're going to do (not what you COULD do, what you're GOING to do) to get it right. You can spend two days (or two weeks, if necessary) getting something worked out now, or spend twenty years looking at the painting with regrets. Now -- when you describe this as your "first in many years" -- is NOT the time to race to a finish.
You also said that you'd put in an extra flower or two to draw the viewers' eyes away from the legs. I advise rethinking that strategy. If there's a problem with the legs, fix it. Don't employ visual tricks to distract the viewers' attention away from the problem. In the first place, it won't work -- indeed, it will likely actually highlight the "problem" area. And consider what's happening in that scenario anyway -- you're deliberately working to get the viewer to look at a background area. You should be deliberately working to get the viewer to look at the portrait subject, the focus of the picture, the girl.
With apologies for any dampening of spirit, I think nonetheless that you'll be much happier with the result, and learn more from this project, if you work out very deliberate choices and strategy in your own mind as you work, rather than seeking cues at every stage. There's nearly a surfeit of advices in this thread to consider, and yet paradoxically a number of issues haven't even been touched upon.
Slow down. Give yourself time to absorb and incubate the ideas and suggestions, and then employ them with method and considered deliberation.
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