New Painting -Fish head WIP

While the Rider of the purple Sage is drying enough that I can do detail work on the horse and rider
I started a new painting I'm calling Fish head for now. 

It's the first of the Jar Head series I was thinking about doing. This one is oil paint on a wood panel. I want to stay loose in my brushwork and go for a surreal look. 

Here is the painting as it sits on my easel. I just started last night.

To see the step by step process from mock up to this point read on after the break.

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This is the mock up I'm using for this one as it's still too cold to go out and shoot portrait.
 I found the portrait on the Getty site. It is a public domain image.

This is the sketch I was working from.

I roughly sketched out the image on my 1/4" thick MDF panel that was primed with 2 coats of Blick Gesso. This is a wet wash of color using just mineral spirits as a thinner.

I'm starting to think about the background colors here. Still oil thinned with spirits for fast drying.
 I didn't like the chair and arm in the background so I painted over them.

A little more work on the background and the hat.

Here I refined all of my shapes by overlaying my sketch on a photo of the painting in Photoshop. I find this is an excellent way to see if the painting is getting out of proportion and easy to fix in the early stages. I added to his front arm and took off some from the front of his body. I think it gives him a more confident posture. I also made more of an S curve on the brim of his hat.