Well, congratulations on making it this far you're just about done. A lot of the time, it's hard to know how to decide when a painting is finished and I find that looking at the edge quality is a good place to finish. So I'm going to show you how I would refine the edges looking for soft edges especially, and also refine the hair and get a little bit of reflected light in there. So with the hair first I'm going to be using this three quarter inch graner and I'm going to use a lot of oil. I always use a lot of oil when I'm using the grain or so the strokes flow really fluidly. And I'm mixing just a brownish color with the base shadow color, some transparent red oxide and I'm actually just gonna start by knocking back the highlights just a little bit so that I can lighten into them.

So I'm kind of setting it up for the next stage by darkening it down a little bit first. And I'm using airplane stroke using the texture of the brush to create a hair like texture. So with the airplane stroke, starting where the color is fully there and lifting and pulling as I go to get that textured feel and doing big, broad strokes and twisting the brush as I go. So I want it to create wedge like shapes, like triangles. So if this is the top of the ear, I'm going to kind of figure out how I can make the shapes that comes up above it like a wedge shape. And then I'll also define kind of below the ear, the bottom edge and then pull down from there.

And so you're looking to have the definition where the light meets the shadow be kind of Zig zaggy. So not like line line, but kind of this zigzaggy kind of shape. darkening the ear and a little bit, we see a little light rim of the top edge of the ear but the ear is mostly pretty dark and you want to watch that the ear should be dark and really setting into the shadow side. And then I think next I can start to go into the reflected light in the hair. So using some verde and green, some cobalt blue, some white In a lot of oil, I'm going to create that turquoisey color, which is coming in and I'll mix it into a bit of the base hair color so it's not screamingly turquoise, it'll still look pretty turquoise but it won't be too strong. And let's just do a dab to see what it looks like.

Looks like it could work I'm gonna mix a bit more bass shadow color in and they're still having the kind of zigzagging interweaving shapes describing the locks of the hair. Bringing in the lightest light. As you can see, it's a zigzag that just runs along the whole plane change in the hair. Where the top plane is meeting the side plane It's got some variety to it. It's thick and thin, just varied. Right where the light meets the face, you can have that be like a really last edge.

And you can also wiggle a slight cool note. In this time we're edges along where the face meets the hair where like the face meets the hair is always a really soft edge. So make sure you soften that kind of like the mouth I like soften it and then soften it again. And then soften it again you want it to be like really soft. There's a little cool coming into the side plane of the neck here. And there's a very subtle warm reflected light showing in the shadow side.

And this is one of the cases where you want to make sure you put it in See that's way too light. You want to make sure that you put it in really dark and really understated And that might still be to light from darkening it with some transparent red oxide and some base shadow color. I want it to be super subtle. It's just enough that it gives a little definition to where the edge of the faces, but it just really sits into the shadow side. And this is the area where people will often make the reflected light to light and too strong. And it'll actually compete with the shadow pattern and actually start to merge with the lights of the face and look really plasticky and weird.

With the mouth, we've been keeping the edges soft as we're going and I'm going to just keep softening more and more. It's almost like with the mouth. You soften the edges then you soften them again and then you soften them again. And with this back corner of the mouth. We're basically going from the warm center of the most To a slightly cooler sort of gray green note at the back corner of the mouth. And yeah, it's just a really last edge.

So it's gonna take a little bit of niggling around to get it soft enough. And to get that transition from the, the warm center have the most to the cool back corner of the mouth to just be subtle and gradual. And last, and I'm doing, I'm scratching my fingernail there and I'm doing strokes that are kind of going across the forum. So nothing that's going with the form of the lip, and I'm also looking at the overall shape of the lip and there is a certain sense of a continuous curve coming through here and then down to that muscle tuck at the back of the mouth. So it's just really subtle stuff. It's like it gets a little darker Right in here, which also helps it just get really lost, we can just hardly see anything in here it gets just really subtle.

So, and then, with this shadow underneath the most, what you want to watch is that you don't have this shadow underneath them of pulling too far over. That way that can start to change the expression make the lower lip look like it's puffing outwards. So I just make sure that it's really kind of the darkest part is localized in the center right underneath the lower lips, sort of in the center of it. And it gradually transitions in a really soft edged way again, through the side here, and again, it just takes a little bit to get it as soft and subtle as a trend of a transition as you want. Sometimes I rub it with my finger to sort of pull in A mid tone note over the place where it transitions and even this shadow here is almost like a little bit too sudden, everything in the mouth needs to be really soft and subtle.

So I'm making that even a little softer and subtler back here as well. The most like really relates to the muscles around the mouth as you're seeing So, getting the most accurate isn't about getting just the shape of the lips accurate. It's about getting the relationship in this muscle area and even into the chin. accurate and soft. really making sure that there's no edge to the lower lip around here. just totally lost through that center and pulling the slightest lighter note along the turn at the top of the lip.

Really painting that in little gaps going across the form like this rather than painting it like following the shape of the edge and keeping it a little less light than what one might think there's a tendency to overstate this light It suddenly has changed the shape of this peek at the top lip here, so I'm just gonna carve that back very subtly. There's a little bit more like carrying forward here as well. Okay, so that's the finishing touches of the lips. Now I'm going to move to the hair and just add some final touches through the hair. So with the hair, I'm going to use graner brush again with a cool color. It's like the base shadow color with some cobalt, or you could use civilian and I'm just gonna bring out the reflected light Cool reflected light just a little bit more, oops, it's a bit strong.

Take that off. And there's a certain curving shape through here. The color that I've got on my brush is cool and it's pretty dark. So it's still fitting within the framework of it being part of the shadow side. So you really want to make sure that you don't get too light, it is standing out like we do see it, it's not so dark that we don't, you know, see the shift into the reflected light, but it's still pretty dark. There's also a little bit more of an actual dark describing where the ear kind of the hair opens up into the ear.

So in these final stages, we want to start to really hit the full level of content annotating the darkest darks in the hair hitting, you know the slightly lighter reflected light in the shadows. If there's any areas that you haven't got the lightest notes in, in the face, you'll want to do that too. And I'm using strokes that are going with the form in the case of the hair, so that the sort of shape of the stroke describes the hair that's a bit too late. And I'm gonna go a little bit into the part at the top of the head too. I want to keep that really subtle. So it's a darkish color.

It's kind of like the base flesh color but it's a little bit darker. And I'm using my greater brush to just go along so that the edge here has a slight brushy sort of stroke, which sort of resembles like hair. And just like with the mouth, the hair is a case where you want to soften the edge, especially the hairline, and then soften it again and then soften it again. So, really softening, and I'm doing strokes that are going this way, kind of mimicking the way the hair grows out of the head. So we'll get these slight little graner brush strokes, right along, you know where the hairline is starting. And it just suddenly, it's very subtle, it's really soft, but it just subtly suggests the hair, the direction of the hair growing out.

And also is cutting in just a little bit on my particular forehead, which I think felt just slightly too large. So that might not be the case with your painting, but it is the case with this particular one. Bringing in again, the darkest dark Kidding. So hitting the darkest darks. These aren't pure black. This is like black with some brown with some red but it's pretty dark.

Oh, so do some little hair like strokes alone where the hair is meeting the face here, just to get that hair like texture. It makes a softer edge and it gets like a sort of sense of the texture of hair. You can even use your fingernail just scratch lines. You know, hair like lines. So that looks pretty good. Maybe there's a little bit of a cool highlight coming along with this abandon this form of the hair too, which I'll just put in with my greater brush again, going along with the form so that you can see the texture of the line of the strokes.

And right here, do you see how I'm letting like the light cool, fully connect to the face, you know, all the way so there's not like a little dark line at the edge of the hair. This form fully wraps right into the face. And that helps soften the edge of the hair more to and you can see the same thing happening on this side. Yeah, and so I'm pretty happy with the hair. And I think Lastly, I'm just going to go into some details just around this I just the eyebrows a little bit to the shape of the eye. So with this eyebrow, I think it just could actually come up just ever so slightly more, just a little bit of an angle using the greater brush still to get that texture of hair like texture that the greater brush is so good at and then the form of the socket that I like the part just underneath the eyebrow that's forming the eye socket.

It goes from like light here to a little bit darker. So I'm just going to work into that a little bit more, just making it ever so slightly darker in here and a little higher up at the back corner, getting that angle to the eyebrow. So really look at with the eyebrows, the angles that they come in at. It's pretty common to have the eyebrow. Even if you think you've like done it at an angle, the effects can often look just like a generic curve, so kind of triple check that it looks like it's capturing that angle accurately. And I've crossed over this crease just a little bit.

So I'm going to restate that eyelid crease. And with this area right here, where it turns from eyebrow to shadow, you know in the eye socket to downward turning plane between the eyebrows, the foreheads facing this way, this forms turning inwards a little bit, and we've got all of those motions happening. I think the only last thing I need to do is bring a little bit of a darker tone right up next to the eyebrows, which will help this kind of curve down a little bit more softly and what I've put in is just a bit too dark so I'm making it a bit more subtle and then that will be fun. I've made a little bit of a adjustment to that eye crease and I think kind of just pull some eyelash texture there, a little bit stronger over the back here, a little bit more eyelash texture coming up here.

There. So I think the paintings done now and I hope you've really enjoyed seeing me put the finishing touches on the painting, and just establishing that surface quality to the final painting. And remember that it's really a process to learn how to paint the portrait in oils, so you can watch it and rewatch the videos each time something new will stand out. And you'll just deepen and deepen your practice as you go. So enjoy the course. Again and again and thank you for joining me