"Lady Agnew", by John Singer Sargent

Detail of "Lady Agnew", by John Singer Sargent.

It took me about 12 hours over three days, maybe 3-4 hours were used to fix things like symmetry and proportions. My fault for not laying down a well defined sketch first. This is my first all-out "painting" that's actually succeeded: background and foreground, full colour instead of a grey scale test or just my typical sketch, hard contrast for details with the eyes and mouth, lost edges for hair on the right and neck on the left, warm light and cool shadows. There are still some minor issues, but in the end I'm super happy with this!

Photoshop CS3 and mouse. Simple round brush only. No textures other than the final gaussian noise layer.