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This is an enlightening thread. I've been watching videos by Scott Burdick, Morgan Weistling and others. While they are somewhat compressed for time, they seem to film every brushstroke of the process of painting the face, and edit for time when they get to the background.
Weistling's video is ten hours long, and he seems to spend nearly six hours on just the face. The results are beautiful, but as he points out, it's not a portrait. It looks generally like the model, but I imagine he would have to spend a great deal more time to satisfy a portrait client.
I have trouble making myself slow down. I paint much too quickly, and lose accuracy as a result.
One problem for me is that I have a very hard time painting over dry paint. I feel like I can't come back to a painting, because I'll ruin it if I paint on the previous day's work (didn't oil paint used to dry slowly? Seems to dry instantly now).
For now, I scrub down just about everything I paint -- partly because I never finish anything, so I might as well re-use my canvas -- partly because my skill level is not where I want it to be.
I think I need to make a concerted effort to get out of this box and force myself to paint on just one picture over an extended period of time. Painting wet on wet is not an option for long projects, so I just have to learn to paint over dry paint. Heck. If Rembrandt could do it, how hard can it be?
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