Painting #95, I'm really into this portrait thing right now

I don't know what's going on with me, I had 2 that I could have finished in about an hour, and what do I do, I start a portrait of my Mother-in-law, she passed away more than 2 years ago, but it doesn't seem so long, she was a real sweetheart, wonderful woman, welcomed me into the family, and never said boo about the age difference between her son and I, I'm sure she would have loved to have some grandchildren, but she made do with the ones I already had, even though they were already grown, wish we could have kept her longer. Of course this portrait will go on the wall eventually, and not for sale as most of the others will be.

I drew a rough sketch of her, not much detail, just the outside edges and then I put middle value flesh tone on her face and arms, I worked back and forth, lighter and darker until it suited me. Then I painted some greens, yellowish and purplish in the background, wet in wet. By painting the background, I pretty well had the shirt painted, pretty easy, I put a few shadows for the shirt wrinkles, and Ta Da! it was done (I did have to go into the background at the end and ramp up the flowers and greenery, getting really dark close to her, and that helped to clean up the edges of the sleeves. I really worked hard on the face, I wanted it to look like her (for lots of reasons, mostly my husband and his family), when you do flesh, the colors you mix vary, cool and warm, since my palette is opaque, I did use some of the light flesh tones available, juane brilliant reddish and some juane brilliant (more of a yellowish, these are very light and then I added Indian red and yellow ochre to that, then I did add some some blue to that mix to cool it down and that's what I used. I had a lot of fun with this portrait, I like it and hope you do too, she was a unique woman.