Hey Beautiful

I've just about finished my smiling people painting, which I've taken to calling Hey Beautiful.  I may go back and do a few touch ups here and there, but for the most part, I feel done with it.  Here are some process shots as well as the final one, the lowest on the page being the most recent:

Grrrrrr

Jessica's big head is giving me problems.  After many hours of work on it this weekend, and several attempts at retouching, I finally went back in and scrubbed it out to start anew.  I think that the biggest issue is, well, how big it is.  Because Jessica sits a couple feet in front of the other people in my source photos, she is by far the largest figure.  But as true as the perspective may be, it looks strange when painted.  This is partly because I chose to paint the people on the couch, where most of the sitters are located, approximately life size.  Jessica, in the foreground, needs therefore to be larger than life size, and so ends up looking like a stray figure from a mural or billboard instead of a cohesive part of the composition.  On my next attempt, I'll have to figure out a better balance between the suggestion of perspective and what fits in with the rest of the painting.

Here are a couple of process shots to give you an idea of how things were going before I got entangled in scale issues.  My first layer of color:

And the first few flesh tones applied:

Why Hello There, Gorgeous

I've just finished the under-painting for my next large oil on paper painting.  I've generated this composition differently than most.  Instead of starting, as I usually do, by thinking of what image I would most want to paint, I began by thinking about what image I would most want to have on my wall.  I decided that if I were being honest, the image that I would most want to encounter everyday would be one of a bunch of people looking at me as though they love me and are joyous to see me.  So this is the feeling that I'm setting out to evoke with this group of smilers.  I want the painting to gaze with love upon it's viewer.

Do you think I can manage to complete a painting that smiles affectionately at it's viewer without its veering too deeply into the creepy?