Update on Family Portrait

Below are 3 images of my parents' portrait in progress over the month of June. The first one is the newest.

#1 The painting as of June 30th.  I laid in the hands as I see them in the reference photo, which unfortunately is overexposed in that area. But I've recently taken a set of reference photos for their hands and after I review them I'll have to see what final position makes sense. In the original, my mom is holding a handkerchief in her left hand while not seeming to grasp the branch itself, so the position of the thumb is a bit of a mystery. In the last session, I decided to concentrate on the blue coat, bringing up the chroma of the cobalt blue while trying to model the folds and curves on the right sleeve. In a later stage, once I've brought my dad's coat to the same level of completion, I'll bring the blue back down with a few glazes as needed....

#2 June 24. At this stage, I began laying down some blue over the base grey I laid down. In the reference photo, there are several blues at play, some on the purple side (cobalt blue) and some on the green side (cerulean blue). Eventually I decided to make cobalt blue the dominant blue in the coat and scarf, although I imagine I'll add some greenish/grey tints to reflect the surrounding shadows...

#3 June 4. Early work on my dad's portrait: The reference photo (shown in my previous post) places his face mostly in the shadows and his eyes are obscured by the reflection of his glasses. I've just positioned the features where I believe they should be. More refinement will be done later, especially balancing highlights with his skin tone.

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: