Posing

 

Oil.  This is based on a series of photos taken several years ago of my wife posing in the 20 or so dresses she'd  made. Many of the photos were quite nice but none really grabbed me to paint, but recently I narrowed it down to one dress color that seemed to be more harmonious with the scene, but painted the style of a different dress, except raising the hemline.  The background is moved around for compositional purposes - I think that's what detracted from the original photos.  The wall there, and the piano, are actually at 45 degrees to the wall with the window.  But I squared them up and eliminated some of the other clutter on walls and on the piano.  

Bridget of course cannot stand to not be continuously loved, and so she eventually got in some of the pictures, on one of her favorite chairs, and Squirtle looks on while bossy Bridget gets all the attention. 

From a distance I was not happy with the separation of Cathy's face from the background so I fooled around with the wall value, darkening it, and added the mirror on the right wall because the empty area did not seem to work.