A Portrait I

I finished this painting before Christmas but I had a little bit of a problem getting it scanned/photographed. The painting was going as smoothly as you would want, got it finished before schedule like I said, scanned it in- job done. Then when I looked at it on screen I realised the goddamn dinner plate didn't work compositionally- it was too distracting, and in fairness I never really painted it to a satisfactory standard. It was annoying in many ways, but especially so seeing as I had a problem with it from the start, but didn't act on my instinct. A lesson to be learned... Anyway, I couldn't rest until I painted the plate out of the picture, but by this time everywhere professional was closed for the holidays in terms of getting it onto the computer. I had a couple of days before it would no longer be in my possession so I had a friend photograph it for me in my kitchen, under appalling lighting conditions. Needless to say I've had to tweak it in Photoshop...moral of the story: if your intuition is telling you that something doesn't work in a painting- act! change the bloody thing.