Portrait

I appear to have lost my comment so here it is again, good portrait, maybe to try and deal with your view of it appearing like a waxwork, add bit of texture to the quite large cheek area where it appears on the photograph, you would probably need finer brush to show few of the lines that are shown on the photograph, Round the side of the eye for example, and maybe ease up on the amount of shadow between the ear and the eye, but as I said it is good

Ros. Thanks for taking the time to comment and sorry for deleting your original comment. I wasn't happy with the photo previously submitted so in deleting it I also deleted your comment. I will try what you suggest and see how it works out. Thanks again

I think you've done a fine job with this - your problem of course was that you were working from a photo alone: that's always going to give you the huge problem that the tones will be too even... and no, the flash wouldn't have helped either. I think Ros's advice is sound, with the cautionary note that you could start to make major changes and suddenly find you really haven't got all the information you need; and then you'll go wrong..... But don't be put off by me, I'm just naturally cautious! For your first oil portrait, it's really excellent - do more, and, when you can, work from life. Or at least from sketches as well as from photos (you probably did sketch it from the photo, but what you wanted really was a couple of sketches of your subject direct from life. I'm assuming, of course, that he's still with us - a bit of a problem if he isn't.)