"sorting grandpa": more to do

i worked about an hour on this painting yesterday. the hands proved to be difficult, mainly due to the fact that the reference photo is a bit confusing....what's fingers, whats thumbs, what's neck? in the end i put in what i could see, tried to get the values right,  and hoped that it would read okay. richard schmidt (i think) once said that one shouldn't put anything in a (representational) painting that one could not see. in this case it seemed like the way to go. i am a little unsure about the hue and value of the background. i put a light wash of ultramarine blue to gray it down but i think i like it a bit warmer so i am quite sure the next glaze will be something warm.....orange, quinacridone gold, red????? at some point i will have to decide on my t-shirt....more or less defined?

quite a bit of time was spent with very small details such as putting in some darker accents around eyes, nose, corner of mouths, etc. i always like to get some bits of warm (read red) around the eyes. there are spots in sophie's hair that are not reading well, again with the photo which is confusing, but i think i have it worked out. as i want sophie to play the lead role i added a light vermillion glaze over my face (it wasn't dark enough, i thought) and then pushed it back a bit with a thin glaze of ultramarine blue. overall this didn't change the value much but did make it less prominent, allowing sophie to shine.

this is getting pretty nearly finished. mainly thinking more and painting less....never a bad idea.