A commissioned portrait painted from a very good photograph. I was given the choice as to how I wanted to recreate the image. I considered coloured pencil , pastel and watercolour but decided on oil. I went bigger than originally planned approx. A2. I drew straight onto a white background using Raw sienna. I then added cobalt violet for the darker areas before mixing under painting white , Raw sienna and a touch of magenta for the lighter areas. That's all I used in the early stages, no blue as I found the Raw sienna and white was giving me cool enough mixtures. I did use Yellow ochre and cadmium red as the painting progressed and I needed more opaqueness. I needed to redraw the lower part of the face as it was all wrong. I used a variety of mixtures for the hair and found a mixture of Alizarin and Viridian very effective for the darker areas.