Smiling Bar Mitzvah portrait + sister/brother

[Andrea Kantrowitz]

I was having difficulty with this portrait because the boy is quite heavy--and his mom loves his eyes, but also wanted him smiling(which makes his eyes get quite narrow.)

This seems to come up quite a bit with smiles and eyes--(I'm finding the teeth problem more easily avoided)

Also--any suggestions for the border? I tried taking a motif from the prayer shawl but it was too distracting. that's his Hebrew name on the bottom of the painting.

Also the color looks more broken up in the jpeg-- more blended and not as saturated in real life. (!4"x18")

The other painting has been less problematic--the parents are basically happy with it and I'm in the fine tuning phase, but any comments would be much appreciated (30"x30")

Thanks!
Andrea Kantrowitz