Sample finished

This is an oil, 16"x20" on stretched canvas, I recently finished as a sample. I actually bought publication rights to the reference photo... something new to me. I liked that the faces of the woman and her dog were right up next to each other, unlike most 'me and my pet' photos. And I loved the expressions on their faces. I'm going to need samples of all sorts of portraits for the new studio and thought this addressed one category well.
This is the barest start of a commissioned oil portrait, 16"x20" on stretched canvas, of an eight-month-old boy. I'm using several photos and doing a composite of information from them. It makes me a little nervous to post these beginnings because they're in the prolonged ugly stage and some people will think that's how it's going to look when they're done. But take heart... they get better as I go along. My first interest is just get the canvas covered. I haven't even finished that stage yet. I'll post the progress images along the way.
I teach a painting class tonight and another tomorrow. Then Morgan has her 26th birthday on Friday. I was 26 when she was born. It's all going by so quickly. When I stop to see how good everything is here and now, I want to go back in time to the 26-year-old me and whisper in her ear, "Hang in there. It gets really wonderful later on."
Helen Van Wyk says in one of her painting videos that her teacher insisted that you weren't painting until you were painting on paint. "...first cover the canvas..." I guess at 26 I was just covering the canvas. Now I'm starting to paint on paint. So go ahead... take chances, make mistakes, do the best you can. Later you can make corrections, deepen the shadows, add some highlights, rethink the composition entirely. You're the artist here.