I have no formal training in art or painting. I have limited experience, starting only 18 months ago. I take a naive but hopefully effective approach to portrait painting. I envisage a destination - then paint until I arrive. To do so, I use shape upon shape. I don't have a technically informed notion of what will exactly happen when I apply the paint - I am painting into the shadows, into the unknown - but by listening to the passion surging through my being as I make a connection with the image I'm using, I nether the less arrive at my intended destination. Well, almost my intended destination. The unknowns and intuitive splashes of inspiration during the painting process does not allow a clean transition to my conceived result - it instead mixes things up and allows room for interesting mistakes. Proportion is key, for me, but colour and angle is applicable and effective once inside a window, a range of correctness, and this creates a opportunity for serendipitous deviation from the consulted image, even the intended destination, that may indeed emphasise the expression, the soul, of the muse - may be more enshrining of the infinite unknowableness that constitutes the "character" of the individual.
I paint shape upon shape, holding all the necessary proportions in reference the best I can with each knew application of paint, each new sought-out shape, that layers over the last, creating brand new shapes and effects until a shapes materialise that work, that speak to me of the character and the soul of the destination. I then leave it alone.