[Chris Saper]

Dear Sandra,

You've done a good job with some very challenging material! It is so very difficult to add head and body from different sources, but especially so when the angles aren't exactly the same.

You have done a nice job with the drawing, and there are just a few areas I'd suggest revisiting. First, review the tip of the nose and the mouth - the cheek in the head resource is squished against the older person's head, which removes perspective from the features and negatively impacts their symmetry. In addition I would study the clothing, finding folds and shadows to define its shape. You might also check the arms and hands. Little kids have such characteristically odd ways of holding their chubby little hands, (frankly, I think they are all difficult!) that it becomes very important to look for shapes and angles to give a sense of roundness and form.

My overall observation is that there doesn't seem to be information about the light on your subject - in the quality, color or intensity. The photo with the body reference does have a strong sense of strong directional outdoor light, although the head reference has such diffuse lighting that it's hard to have a sense of setting or direction - in fact the cheek on our right has more light than the cheek on our left. I think that contributes a lot to the difficulty in trying to decide how to paint the light -the conflict invites us to think, "Well, hmm, maybe I'll just "split" the difference", and as a result, there is no light direction at all. Finding the small cast shadows in the clothing, and looking for the qualities of the larger cast shadows will help. Photographing your subjects with a definite directional light will assist a lot in giving you the information you need to describe form.

The gold spotlight background is of course reminiscent of the typical studio photograph, and your friend's request may have less to do with aesthetics, and more to do with her stereotypical notion of what a "portrait" should be. I think it will be to everyone''s benefit for you to take control over such decisions.

Last, a note on color. By adding some reflected color into white clothing, you can integrate the subject and clothing/background. In the places where skin touches skin, keep all those shadows dark and very warm, for example, the nostrils, lips, mouth and eye corners, under the chin, and under the ear lobe.

Good luck!