Thanks Cindy, that might be it !
Marina, Richard, I appreciate your input
thanks
Ilaria

Always trust this voice - it is your intuition and is usually telling you what you already know.

Have a lovely trip to Italy. While you're spoiled rotten in London with centuries of design and art everywhere you turn, and the British Museum's recent Michelangelo show, the invenzione of the Italians remains a benchmark, up through Annigoni, anyway.

I hope western culture has not completely overrun her charm.

Buon lavoro....

Ilaria, I know you're trying to paint children from life and I just wanted to say that I think there should be a special Artist's Medal of Valor for this. I think the problem that you are having - that we all are having - is that clients generally expect tight photographic fidelity, something hard enough to achieve with an adult client, much less a fidgety child. He is not a still life and not an artist's model. I personally haven't been happy with the stupified expression that a child gets when he watches TV during a sitting, though I know artists that do this and a few are successful.

I think your loose, charming, painterly approach is the stylistic solution.

I think there is a way to combine life sittings for head only (full face or profile I think would be easier than 3/4 view) and clothing on dummies and stretch out the live sittings over a few days, working only on the head during the live sittings. I'm still working on this myself but your brain will be the first one I pick apart with respect to working methods.