New Project: Portrait of E. and R. Ray

I started a new project two weeks ago at the cottage: a portrait of my parents.
The reference photo below is an old digital photo from a visit to Haliburton on Thanksgiving in 2001.
In my first session, I did a quick dry brush drawing based on a cropped version of the photo. I wanted to focus more on them as subjects and include less of the background woods. But I felt that my placement of my Dad was flawed: with the left elbow disappearing into the right edge of the canvas, it made his left arm look like a stump! So I moved the figure to the left several inches. I lost a good drawing of his facial features, but I'll recover them later... The background woods will be lightened much later and I've decided not to include the tree trunk; I want to include some open space instead with the suggestion of younger trees and

For this painting, I'm trying a new gadget that allows me to connect an iPad to a tripod -- very handy!

Current state: 

Original layout: 

Reference Photo: