Thank you for providing such inspiring references! I struggled to paint this but it was also a joy! I decided I needed to put it in time out and maybe revisit it after my skills improve. That shirt gave me fits! I'm finding out that I am a very messy painter and I get totally overwhelmed with brushes and rags all over the place. I have a hard time cleaning the brushes in between colors. I keep having to remind myself that I am not painting a wall and to stop overworking my brush strokes. Even though I am already quite slow, I think I need to slow down more and stop when I start getting tired, because then I make a mess. Anyway I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us. I am quite happy with my second oil portrait, I love the old world/antique feeling of it!

I can only work on this on weekends so it is taking me a while. It's very challenging. The face is coming along but the shirt looks very messy, I scraped off the background because I didn't like what I did. I can't get the color of the blue/green ribbons for the medals unless I add the cobalt blue to my palette? I can see a spot on the neck that I need to fix. By now all the mixes are dried in the little cups so I will have to mix everything again. Any pointers for next weekend's session?

It's a bit off, I will look at it with fresh eyes.

Forgot to post the stages, wonderful class. Thank you.

Learning to work with oils, especially the brushwork and how to handle the multiple brushes has been a big challenge. I do enjoy mixing the colors. This is my first oil portrait. It's not really painterly, I am struggling to make little brushmarks and leaving the marks alone. I'm really enjoying the class and learning a lot.

That's where I am right now. I have to do it in stages over many days. My problem is that part of it is dry, and part of it is sticky. Some parts look dull, while others are shiny. I have no experience with oils. Is that normal and if not, what can I do about it? Thanks for your guidance.

I think I did it wrong, I used my average shadow mixture but it seems to be a lot warmer than your example. Do I have to cool it down? Make it darker?

I'm learning so much! Thanks in advance for your input.

I have no idea if that is ok or not. Is there a way to position my glass palette so I don't have reflection in it, I have a hard time seeing the values on my palette because it reflects everything. I tried slanting it but that didn't help much.

This class is quite amazing and I never expected feedback from you Morgan. I do really appreciate the time and effort you put in to make newbies like me new portrait painters. I am so intimidated by oil paint but I feel this course is what I need to tame the beast. This is my drawing without a grid. I used plum lines and angles and my proportional divider to compare measurements. It turned out quite different from my gridded drawing. It's much easier with the grid, but I enjoy challenging myself. I find that I can't visualize the shapes without filling them with tone. Is there anything out of whack I need to fix before putting a fixative on it?