Gavin McDermott

Reference photo is low key, therefore need to push darks to really dark

We looked at work by three artists:

• Valasquez
• John Singer Sargent
• Mary Cassatt

And then having adjusted an eye up on the previous week, there was something not quite right going on here… so I tried to make this face a bit more symmetrical. I didn’t much like the really sad expression, too, so curled a corner of the mouth up a bit…

However, this was all a bit trickier with the paint fully dried. Also, I restated the darks of the eyes, but I think there’s something fundamentally not quite right with the drawing proportions …so stopped fiddling!