Hello Mike:
Great shots both. You mentioned that you had not much experience painting babies. I have done several very young children in charcoal and oil. The thing to realize is that their features are not fully formed yet, so they are fleshy and round and very soft. This means that your tonal transitions need to be very soft too. Otherwise you will get what my wife critically called "old baby syndrome" when looking at my first attempt to paint a baby. The value transitions were too steep between the highlights and shadows and the look was severe and angular - not words to describe a young child.
Little fingers can be a challenge too. They are perfectly anatomical, but they also are fat and pudgy and often they will appear to be wrongly foreshortened - again, it is the value transitions that make the difference.
Kids seem to lose most of this fat by the time they are 3-4 years. I am working on a dual portrait of two kids right now with one girl at around 5 and the other is 2-3. The difference in their anatomy is dramatic. The five year old looks like a little adult, while the younger child still has fat cheeks and fingers.
Hope this helps!
