"Don't Mess with Me!"

My newest piece is called "Don't Mess with Me!" because of the intimidating expression on the model's face.  She is powerfully present, staring straight into the camera.  She's wearing a large, dominant turquoise and silver necklace which her grandmother gave her.  I am pretty much done with her body, face, and the background, but the necklace is taking me some time to paint.  It's challenging to paint tarnished silver with detailed metalwork on it. 

Below you can see a close up of the necklace with some of the medalions painted and some unpainted still.

I spent 2-3 hours on it a couple of days ago during a break in tutoring and was only able to get 2 1/2 pieces of it done.  I have seven more to go, so I guess I'll need a full day to finish them up.  I hope to do a piece or two in a few minutes once I finish writing this blog.  It's interesting trying to create a texture and a finish I haven't done before.  As with everything else, though, I'm finding the trick is to look at what I see and paint exactly what I see, color, shape, line, value, then it will look like what I see.  That seems to be the whole trick to painting realistically.  Accurate representation of what you see in front of you.