Portrait of Molly Hayes, 21x42", oil on linen. 3 2-hour sittings. Painted from life.

29x40", oil on linen. Four sittings of about 2 hours each.

Second two-hour sitting of my friend's daughter, Molly. Should knock it out in one or two more..

First two-hour standing of my friend Renee. Moving along! This is 22x28" oil on linen.

The head is finished and now I have to fine-tune his hands and clothes etc. (Looking a bit Cezanne-ish at the moment!) Probably need one or two more sittings. I've attached a reference photo that I took on my cell phone so I could remember his pose.

This is after the second pass of my friend John Hendrix (not to be confused with Jimi)!. Probably need one or two more.

A crappy cell phone shot of a 2-hour study of my friend Mia. You can see a better version of this here.

Here's the latest. I had been working on this on and off for the past year. Attached is an earlier image with the set-up. Using comparative measuring for this one.

These are kind of crappy cell phone photos of the first pass from life of my good friend Pete's daughter, Molly. She did 5 10-minute poses and was a very good sport.  We'll probably need to do two more sessions to finish. I'll post as I go.

42x21", oil on linen.

Here's the set-up.

As you can tell, I was mostly concentrating on her face and will fix things as I move down. But you can see the sight-size setting approach (setting the canvas side-by-side with the subject and walking back and forth from a fixed spot to apply paint). I'm becoming more and more convinced of its merits for speed, accuracy and freedom. There's really no need to paint from photos unless one absolutely must.

Or, "The Reluctant Sitter"! A quick portrait sketch of my lovely wife. Three 10- minute sittings and the last one she could only last for 5 minutes.

I'm planning on starting a large painting of her this weekend. Very excited. She's so beautiful.