small portrait painting on hot press paper

now that i have been using the lana hot press paper off of a 10"X14" block for my "practice" paintings, i was interested in finding out how that might work with a portrait. i will try to keep in mind the lessons that i learned in trying to stay loose and mixing more on the paper. additionally, i will try the "thirds" approach to the background i talked about on the last post. this painting is of a young woman from a photo that was posted on the site brush with water by stephie butler. i think it is a photo of her granddaughter(?) safina. when i saw it in the reference section of the website i knew that eventually i wanted to paint it. that eventually appears to be today. here is what i have done so far.

"safina" first stages

i won't bore you with the details as i painted this pretty much how i have described in numerous other previous posts. i will say that i am going to try to leave some of the less necessary details understated. we'll see how that goes. i must say that i post this with a bit of trepidation as i consider the subject's grandmother stephie butler to be really good at the understated portrait. i just hope that in the end the result will do some justice to safina's likeness. i will post the final result later today or tomorrow. thanks for following along.