Portrait of Karina

This past week I have been working on a portrait of my neighbor's daughter. This is my fourth portrait and each time I have done one, it's like I never tried one before. I posted it on Wet Canvas as a work in progress and it is absolutely amazing how helpful my fellow artists were each time I posted. Here are some of the posts I made and some of the helpful comments I received.

In this first picture, I did sketch and basic block-in.

In this next picture, I placed Karina's features in and worked a bit on the hair and her jacket.

 I wasn't satisfied with her eyes, and because the photo of Karina that I had didn't have very good lighting, I had to improvise. The photo indicated that the light was coming from the right because her hair was highlighted, so I tried to lighten up the face on the right and darken it on the left.

In the final painting, I made some corrections on her eyes, her nose, and mouth, and finally decided that this is done.The painting is actually a bit brighter than it appears here, but all in all, I am very pleased with the results.

My next attempt at a portrait will be from a very old picture that I have of one of my siblings.  This one will be a lot harder because it is in black and white and the photo is very light. Hopefully I will do her justice.

Thanks for taking a look.