Finally finished this after having a whole day of bad attempts. I kind of wanted something very painterly but it just wasn't coming together. Sometimes I think the image knows what it really wants. After looking over my recent attempts at portraiture, I saw that I was going back to lines, something that has been central to what I do for a long time. So I inked the sketch instead of painting it. That was a misstep but I came back and inked it again and this time, I think it worked. Something came to me either in bed or the shower, two great places to get some thinking done. I decided to ink only him to help him stand out. All the rest of the shapes were done separately in Procreate to keep those nice, textured strokes. This tested Procreate as I went way past the limit of 14 layers at the size and DPI of the file I was making, so I had to keep making marks, exporting then clearing layers to get it done. In the end, the folder with stuff made for this holds 65 elements from original sketch and brushed shapes for shadows, highlights and details to the vectorized versions of the same. Once I got the process down, it actually went pretty quickly. I wanted to spend the most time on his face and make the rest of the details less defined. I think it works. For the palette, I sampled colors from one of Rembrandt's self-portraits. I do love brown but wouldn't have otherwise chosen it as with the inked style, I tend to lean towards brighter and less natural colors. I think the browns work well here, even if I cheat and use them for things they wouldn't really represent, like the lights. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Dr. Hutchinson, though, won't let me hang it in the house. :"D