Noah's guitar continued

I've started another painting in my class with Gabriel Lipper so I'm not moving along with Noah's Guitar as fast as I might, but here's the latest progress:

I think this is where I left off in my last post - still trying to get the rubber out of that guitar neck...

Catching the age of a child is really tricky. Noah might look like this when he's about 13, but now he's not quite ten.

  There's something about the angle of his head that isn't right but I can't quite figure it out.

SOooo' I can muck around for hours trying to "find" him (and hone my drawing/painting skills, yes)  OR I can do what a purist would call "cheating" and I call a means to an end. I suspect this is done more than most painters will admit but I will share it with you rather than pretend I'm an ace at portraiture.
Here's what I did: I measured the head in the painting (6 1/2"). Then I opened the reference image in my computer and cropped the photo down to just the head- crown to chin. Then I printed the image choosing the size of 61/2". Now I have a photo I can lay over the painting and see where I have gone astray.  Watch the video:

Ah HA! the reason he looks older is because I've made his features too small! And, I've made my classic mistake once again of making the right eye too low. That's why the angle of the head looked off.

 Ok- I've got this photo so why not rub some charcoal on the back and transfer the position of the features right on to the painting?  Who's to know? Who cares? Not me and hopefully not you.

Now this looks more like the photo - with plenty of room for my interpretation or "style".

 

It's interesting that I can see bits of his sister that I had not noticed before.  I'll let this dry before I do any more, so if I muck it up I can at least go back to this and try again.

 And in the meantime there's a very interesting fretting hand to work on.

Stay tuned - there will be more. Did you like the addition of video in this post?

 

Delicious Distractions

You all need to know something.

We have a new dog. He's eye candy - a beautiful tri-color Assie mix with bright eyes and huge ears. He is sweet and smart and playful when it's time to play and mellow when it's not. I'm teaching him how to catch a frisbee.

He is a joy and a distraction. Here he is in my studio being Extra Good:

We named him Friday, partly because I found him at the shelter on a Friday but also because we knew he would be as loyal to us as Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday was to him.  

We only had him for two days before we hauled him off on a 5 hour trip to Portland for my grandson's 2nd birthday. I love this photo of the two of them:

They are both "distractions" from my studio work. And a huge source of joy in my life.