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Hi Marcus,
Is this a portrait of a living officer? If this is not a posthumous portrait, you are not limited to working from a few limited reference photos.
First I want to talk about lighting. A well thought-out portrait must have consistent lighting. In your first reference photo the light on the figure appears to be from overhead, slightly from our left. Yet the building in the background is lit from our right. In the second reference photo, the planes are lit from the left overhead, which is more consistent with the first figure. If this officer is living, you have a chance to photograph him at the very least. You need to make sure the lighting on him is consistent with the lighting in your background. If possible, photograph him outside. In your painting, you have minimized the shine on his hair, but if the light were coming from our right, there would be a highlight on our right. That kind of strong sunlight would create strong light and shadow patterns on his face, yet there are none under and to our left of his nose, and the value of the shadow areas of his shirt is not deep enough. To pant these things, you really need a reerence photo that is going to give you the information you need.
The other big issue is likeness. I cannot say you have caught a striking likeness of your subject, though there is a general resemblence. The most obvious problem is that the lower half of his face pulls to our right and the nostrils are deformed. But many measurement problems, such as facial width and relative proportions, lead to this result. Just using a plumb line will reveal many of these problems.
The background could be more convincing. The color of the building, the tarmac, and the shirt are almost the same in your painting, yet they are not in the photos. Making the tarmac darker would ground the painting and bring up the contrasting elements. On the right-hand side, the sky meets the ground in a puzzling way, as though the earth drops off unpleasantly into nothingnesss. Why ot use some of the information in your photos, such as runways, etc., to make this right-hand side more convincing? Also, the blue of the sky is not like the blue of nature. The sky near the horizon is much paler. Try white mixed with some pthalo blue or green. Or white mixed with pthalo blue + a tiny bit of cad orange or orange-yellow. Higher up, you can add more pthalo blue in relation to the white. To get the intense blue high up, mix some ultramarine into the mix. Always check against the real sky because it is lighter than we realize.
There may not be much opportunity to work further on this portrait, but hopefully these points may be useful things to consider in future commissions.
Alex
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