Well, I’ll call this done, or abandoned 🙂

Here I’ve brought up the highlights along the forehead, and decided to soften the edges along the shoulders to allow him to blend a little more into the background.  I always find it’s a delicate balance between hard and soft edges in a painting, especially with portraits.  Hard edges tend to stop the eye, while soft edges tend to allow the viewer’s eye to travel, so I’ll attempt to place them within a painting to allow for some movement.  Again, this is another pretty standard trick with drawing and painting, nothing new under the sun.  He’s also been flipped again to the intended angle.  I probably could have spent a little more time on the ear, but I set a limit for myself, and I wanted to stick to it.  This one clocked in a around 3 hrs, but I already had a sketch scanned and ready to go and paint with.  Maybe I’ll post the sketch too…  Anyways, thanks for having a look.

-M