Finishing the Portrait

Holy cow - eight months since I last posted here. So now I'm going to post a bunch of catching-up posts.

First, the Portrait: this is from what I will call my diary, for  

9/5/24:

Ummmm... I think I may have FINISHED The Portrait today... or, all-but. It's TWENTY-SIX YEARS, almost to the day, since I started - I took photos on September 11, 1988. Phew!

 Here are two closeups:

and the full view:

 After this - 9/8/24 - I wrote:

I'm already looking at it and going, hmm, that cheek is not quite right... Nevertheless, it is definitely in its first stage of Finished. I'm going to get it professionally photographed; and then, what else it needs will probably reveal itself to me, and I'll do a bit more, and then get it professionally photographed AGAIN, once and for all.

Here's where it's gotten to - the whole, and some details:

 

9/28/24:

I got it photographed, and then worked an hour on it yesterday. Very mixed feelings. The woman who photographed it for me liked it very much, and also said that to her (as to me) it did not look quite finished; she said some of the same things about it that I've been thinking: needs a bit more contrast/drama (she calls it "making it pop," a phrase which actually I dislike, but the concept of it matches what I'm thinking), that it doesn't look quite real/solid yet. 

I think yesterday's work helped with that, possibly quite a lot, but I am also facing my discontent with my dad's face, and with knowing that how it is now is how it's going to be forever - specifically, a bit muddy and overworked in spots - which is a sad thought. Involving letting go. Which simply finishing, in general, involves anyway.

Posting these here gives me a bit of distance, though, and now I'm thinking, well, maybe it's okay...

 
A friend said, "I think it looks lovely! But I understand the feeling of 'just a bit more...' I think it's the same with any creative project, especially one you've worked on for a long time. It's really, really difficult to decide when it's finished."

To which I wrote:

Yeah... partly there's that point where you're still comparing it to what you had in mind, or (in this case) the actual people and their photos, before the shift to comparing it to itself. If that makes sense. And then coming to see that it is a good, complete, thing in itself...

10/1/24:

Okay. 15 more minutes today, and I. AM. DONE. 90 3/4 hours of work, over 26 years. I don't know if you can even see what more I did, but I did it. One thing was defining the window edges - taking the green of the trees more thoroughly to the frame - behind Dad, more fully. Plus a little more mustache, and  beard-shadow, and hairline.

 

Tech tip: do you want to see any of these larger? Click on the image to make it almost-full-browser-window size. (This is not the same as "full screen...")

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