Another Go

I decided to give it another go, see if I couldn't paint a more finished portrait instead of stopping at a sketch.  Below are three stages of the painting on a 16" x 20" canvas: the drawing, the block-in and the nearly completed piece.

This certainly looks more like my Zach, though there is an undefinable difference that just misses a bit of his essence, leaving me with the challenge to keep working at finding a way to achieve it.  In laying out the features, I have used the standard approach of drawing the vertical center of the face and locating the cross lines for the eyes, the bottom of the nose, the mouth.  But once I was nearer the end of the painting and trying to make small adjustments to reach a closer resemblance, I found that using the points used in facial recognition software - which look to be based more on a three dimensional approach, rather than a two dimensional one - seemed to help.  I will look into that a little more on my next portrait, though I don't think the software points of reference would be as useful in initially laying out the drawing.