Excellent work Valentino, congratulations!

At this size, is your subject is somewhat smaller than life size? Somehow I aways pictured this to be life size in my minds eye, perhaps due to your monumental compositional skills.

Sorry for my delayed visit and response. Thanks for showing us how your painting process works. I think this is helpful to the rest of us facing daunting portrait commissions.

Garth

Thank you for the kind words, Garth. My subject is approx . 1/3 smaller than the life size. I would like to see some more of your work - Apotheon and Laura are both excellent works.

They say that you are only as good as your most recent painting. I always try to do my best + a little bit more, particularly when it comes to the commissions. If you do a good job, it may attracts new potential clients - as it was with this commission which I have gotten after my client saw one of my previous portraits.

I feel I have yet a lot to learn, especially in the field of portraiture. Admittedly, I have graduate from Academy of Fine Arts, but printmaking, not painting. This was my fifth or sixth portrait in oil and, of course, there is much room for improvement. Therefore I am intensely studying old masters, particularly those from baroque era and 19th century academicians. In the works of those artists one can find solutions to all the problems a realistic painter might encounter.

Regarding composition, I have had some doubts regarding how the background should look like. I opted for a simpler one, even started to paint drapery (a curtain, actually) on the left side, behind the sitter. However, after some persuading from the fellow artists I changed my mind and decided to include the cabinet in the painting. Their arguments made sense - it additionally describes the sitter. However, I've made the cabinet a bit simpler than is the actual one, otherwise it would have detracted from the subject.
So, the items inside the cabinet and the reflections on the glass had to be contrived, and I spent considerable amount of time trying to get their look (and textures) right, and at the same time not to overemphasize that part of the painting.