My Dad

Good effort.

Again, I like the hair and I think his suit looks great. Nice subjects to paint too!

Portraiture is hard work, and from b & w phot0s, and probably small ones as most of them were, even harder. You need to pay a bit more attention to proportions, particularly as features relate to each other. I don't of course know what your dad looked like, but in this painting there's a lot of chin; not much distance between the base of the nose and the mouth; the eyes look as if he has two sets of brows; the top of the head is very flat - in other words, you've got all the problems that trying to see and work with an old photo always gives us - the 'flat head' look is probably a lot to do with the Brylcreem our fathers used to lather all over their hair to make it lie flat. Horrible stuff.... On the whole, though, the human head is much the same size above the eyeline as it is below it; dad does look a bit as if an anvil had flatted him up there. But keep going - more and more drawings, but do measure, so far as you can, and get your hands on a book and dvd on portraiture; draw from life when you can, that'll help to make finding the shapes more instinctive.