"Di In Light Air" (12x9 oil on panel) painting process

Hello Steemians,

New painting: An extremely rare portrait commission. Rare because the constraints of a commission can potentially be in conflict with the creative freedom I require to produce my best work, and thus, not something I want to put out into the world. However, when I have completely free reign over a commission (as in this case), it is no different from my normal process. Well, no different but with one major exception: the commitment to pursuing a more precise likeness.

Here is the beginning stage. You'll notice the loose grid which helps me get things started more efficiently, while still relying on the proportional judgments of my eye.

Next stage. Still pushing the features back and forth, searching for correct proportion. You'll notice that at the time of this photo, the eyes appear slightly "wall-eyed". For those without experience with drawing/painting, you'd probably be shocked at how slight a deviation in proportion it can take to make the most absurd and distracting errors, lols.

Closer. I'm laying down juicy strokes with as large a brush as I can stand. I do this in order to make sure that I'm making intentional progress.

When the proportions of the face are close enough, I expand to the rest of the composition. I start experimenting with broken color in the face before committing to any refined details.

I start reducing brush size as necessary.

I'm refining the features while trying to retain saturated color.

The face is slowly improving, and I like where it's heading.

Between the progress shots above and below, I reach a turning point. I posted this statement on Instagram:

I recently posted about the unexpected benefits of an unintentionally protracted painting process that has become common for me these days. And so, the theme continues. This portrait has turned a corner. I thought I was approaching a finish, but then yesterday I realized that in order to satisfy my own evolving expectations, I had to take it to another level of refinement, and so a new can of worms has been opened. I'm coming across technical urges that likely would not have occurred to me had I been able to paint at a quicker and more desirable pace. This is pretty cool. #painterthoughts #tinyassbrush -@davidcheifetz

And so I was committed to more refinement, and the likeness continued to improve:

In these progress pictures, the work represented between each step increases exponentially. At this final stage I made many tiny adjustments to get the likeness to where I wanted it. But of course, a portrait painting is more than likeness. I struggled for this to be bold yet soft and colorful yet accurate. There was always something to be tweaked. Finally, I was happy with the result.

And the finished painting "Di in Light Air" (9x12 oil on panel):

Thanks for reading! -David

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