Figure painting (Melissa)

This is the best painting I have done of a model to date:




I spent three 3-hour sessions on it, and could have had a 4th, but I missed a day due to: hangover, being stuck in snow, needing a day off. (Mostly hangover, though.) Sure, there are some things wrong with it, things I'd like to fix, things I can't fix, but I think I also just need to accept my paintings that are less than Rembrandt quality and move on...

What I am happy about in this painting:

• I got the skin variations a little closer together.
• I got so much done on the first day that I was blown away! I'd done a preliminary drawing (or actually two, if I recall correctly), so I knew where the pitfalls were (ie: leg/hip size - a pitfall I fell back into while painting!), but otherwise, I was familiar with the figure and able to get the composition down with minimal difficulty. (Although for some reason, I was absolutely unable to shrink the figure down to say 80% of its size, which I think would have fit the composition better: I wanted the figure to be smaller in relation to the overall picture size. By the way, this photo is cropped slightly.)
• I was pleased with how I put the face in: not overly detailed. I find this quite difficult, and even this one has slightly too much detail, but it's totally acceptable. (To me.) (Right now.) I'd wanted to focus on her torso, with a glow coming off her flesh there, and the extremities of lesser importance. I think I more or less managed to achieve that. Except that....

Difficulties with this painting:

• ...I had a hard time keeping the paint on her belly interesting. It's such an expanse of flesh, and it feels kind of like driving the prairies, with not an interesting landmark in sight!
• It was difficult to keep the shadow values on her stomach, close to the ground. In fact, they're still not dark enough. I had a similar problem on her chest.
• I did a great job blocking in her left hand (resting on her side), then went in and thoroughly destroyed it. I kind of salvaged it at the end, but it never came out as good as I had originally blocked it in. (Damn!)