Nekima Levi Armstrong - small portrait

Nekima Levi Armstrong - American Lawyer, Social Justice Activist and protestor. The White House released images of her crying as she was arrested which she didn't. 

 

Can't quite get a decent image of this but it's going somewhere...  Need to come back to a looser way of working where the imagination has room to explore the image and 'something' is held in the face. 

I've been sucked into how to best mix brown skin tones, but I figure as long as I'm making - there's a body of work that I'm learning from. I have some awful paintings this year that i will not exhibit - but I'm trying to give myself licence to learn from them and develop ways of painting. I tend to fluctuate between different ways of applying paint - I'm not sure i'll ever have a consistent approach.