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Thank-you all for commenting.
Chris - your encouragement (and permission to stop!) means a lot to me. Thank-you.
Carlos - thank-you for your thoughtful comment. I admire Sorolla's facility and feeling for drawing. He also has a feeling for elegance in a figure, like Sargent, which I admire also, but which I seem not to be able to achieve. My instinct is for the sculptural forms and angles of planes. I can't get away from it.
And this brings me to Alex's comment: I have had an ongoing battle for ages between what my instincts want to put down and what I would like to put down, and my instinct is winning. So even if I try to wangle the result into something I would like to see it never really happens so I am beginning to allow myself to let things go. There are two comforting certainties: you'll always end up with some form of painting and you can always scrape it off.
Ilaria - thank-you for your honest criticism. Even though this isn't a crit I appreciate you letting me know of your misgivings about the work. What you noticed about the boy's head is right. It is too narrow. He was leaning up against a chair but I didn't have time to put that in, and the ear, you're right, it is in the wrong place. I have plenty of reasonable priced canvases to do some more sketches of my son in oils and these things will be addressed. One thing I didn't want to do was "fix it up". Accept the metaphorical cellulite and flabbiness of these works as something indicative of humanness (on both the artist's and sitter's part). I am much happier this way.
On your note about the likeness to Freud - he must be somewhere in my subconscious because I really try hard not to paint like him. I do really appreciate most of his work, but he is so distinctive (like Bacon) that it's a bit infra dig. to use his style. Another thing I can't get way from, I suppose.
Thanks again for the always stimulating discourses.
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