Portrait painting, the finished result!- Original oil painting by @mayasky.

Hello and good day!

Today I wanted to share with you the finished results of my latest portrait painting!

To read about the two previous stages, here are the links;
https://steemit.com/art/@mayasky/the-process-from-today-s-portrait-painting-original-oil-painting-by-mayasky
https://steemit.com/art/@mayasky/day-two-of-painting-the-portrait-original-oil-painting-by-mayasky

''Portrait of a girl'' , 20 x 30 cm, painted on gesso primed panel.

So This portrait turned out to be finished today after all!
I thought I would be working on it for at least a week, but sometimes when you have that one good day, that's all you need!

Here you have a progress photo showing the painting next to each other after the end of each day;

Today as the other days I took a few photos to show the process behind the end result.

The first thing I did today was take a palette knife and scrape away at some of the harder lines of the face to soften them. I also took away areas which I felt wasn't working out too well. One area where you can see this clearly is around the mouth.

I then started by going in with the darker values. This is something I more or less always do no matter where I am in the process. I start the day with going from dark to light. I usually find that, that works better than going from light to dark.
Here you can see how I made the hair darker and I also started painting up the shadow in her face. I know I would go over the whole form again as I felt like the connection between the light and dark was too poor. It needed some more halftones!

In this photo you can see I started to model the forhead and nose.

Here I am working on the lips. Again I build the form from dark to light. In this picture you can also see that I have gone over her right cheek and modeled the form from light to dark to make the light flow smoother accross her face.

At this point I am reestablishing the jaw line and going back into the shadows under her chin hand on her neck. Her lips have been re-painted and I've also re- constucted her ear.

In this stage I am working on the same things but you can see it moving forward. The areas are more unifyed and holding together the form better.

After working on this portrait for the past three days I felt like something still wasn't right. A part of me knew all along that she should have a darker background to make her light effect stronger and to give the portrait a greater sense of atmosphere, I was just fighting it. I guess becuase I wanted this to be a portrait with a light background, but as soon as I put in a darker value the whole thing just made so much more sense!

In the final stage I went in and darkened the background even more in certain areas to re-inforce the feeling of space and depth. I also ended up darkening and unifying the whole shadowshape on her neck and chest. I felt like the lower part of the portrait was steeling too much attention from the face so I decided to soften it and blend it more in with the background.

I think I could still work on this portrait for a few days to tweak little things here and there, but my gut feeling is telling me to let this one go now, and I will listen to her this time. There is too much waiting to be painted to let this one hold me back!
:)

What do you think of the finished results?
Do you like the darker background?

I hope you are all having a wonderful and creative day!

<3