A painting may look clumsy in development and generally isn’t correct until complete. Here I’ve shown a few stages in my painting this 14 x 18" portrait study in oil from a live model, which include: 1) my attempt to find a concise pattern of light and dark shapes; 2) the introduction of color-values to model the form; and 3) the softening of those value transitions while restating the drawing. Additionally, soft and hard edges were explored to arrive at a successful finish. The final result of the portrait above was achieved once such stages were repeated several times with increased accuracy in each pass.