To push a project further...

I recently delivered one of my pet portrait paintings to a good customer of mine. They were very happy with the painting in general, but they mentioned as nicely as possible that they felt the face on my portrait seemed a bit masculine for the female dog I had painted. They asked if I could possibly fine tune the face a little more.

I admit, I had mixed emotions, even though I could see exactly what they were talking about with the face being not quite right, inside my head I was freaking out, thinking how on earth can I change that now. I had NO confidence in my ability to be able to make the changes. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure I would be able to work out HOW to fix it, and it came with risks... Any changes I made now had potential to ruin the entire painting. What would happen if I tried but failed, and the painting was then ruined? Start over again?

Anyways, the customer met me at my studio for a chat about the changes. I agreed to give it a try, but first I would try editing a photo of the painting to try to work out what needed to be changed. This process worked well in helping me determine what parts needed changing. Then it was time to try it on the actual painting!

At first I started with small changes to lighten some areas, and re-do a lot of the highlights and shadows on the face. Unfortunately, these changes were not enough to achieve a more feminine face. In the end, I had to paint over an eye and re-do a new eye in a slightly different spot. I thought I had ruined it, but it seemed to come together in the end.

The face now has a better "Likeness" to the reference photo, and the customer is very happy with the changes made! Yes!

I learned that even though it doesn't always feel nice to receive constructive criticism, I now know that I can be pushed to try harder, and to trust my processes and abilities. I am very happy that my customer had the guts to mention that and ask me to try to fix it. It makes me feel much better that I have now given them something closer to what they had hoped for, rather than settling for something that didn't feel right to them.

Here is a photo of the painting... The reference in the middle. The bottom photo is how I originally presented it to the customer, and the top photo is the final painting after I made the changes requested.

I realize this is not a hyper realistic duplicate of the reference photo, but it is my interpretation of that photo and the customer is happy since the changes have been made.

I have also added a photo of it getting a second coat of varnish, only as this is so satisfying...

Thanks for reading!