Oil paintings - portraits

I think I finally discovered why oil paint is so popular for portrait paintings! Its not that this was the first time I used oil paint for portraits, however it was the first time I enjoyed painting with oil.

Oil paint generaly is quite uncomfortable medium: requires turpentine for cleaning, linseed oil, zelkin etc for effects. Drying time is  long- which in my case is a shortcomming- I have no space to have paintings standing arround. Having two little boys arround does not help. Oil paint is also less forgiving with mistakes... 

Even with all of the shortcommings- I truly enjoyed painting the last portraits in my collection:

Free hand

In order to teach myself, I sometimes do free hand sketching:)

Here some of the sketches:

I must admit- I like to sketch beautiful women:)

Normaly, when I do portrait painting, I would do underdraving using some helping equipment of blocking or tracing paper... my ultimate goal is to be able to paint accurate portrait free hand.

R