Photoshop trials

What Mary's portrait needed after three Fridays of careful labor baffled me. I took it to a critique and got advice to soften edges like around the face and advice to harden and darken edge of the face.

Photoshop allowed me to play and see. Right away I rubber-stamped some of the background in the upper right to the area behind the neck. HUGE improvement.

I also wasn't sure what was wrong with the neck, and got helpful insights from Judy Carducci after the critique. I was tickled that Judy felt I had nailed her long graceful neck, but she said there wasn't enough of the base of her left sternomastoid, where it attached to her collarbone. "It would never be a sliver like that," she said and she was right. My photo shows that the trachea was the issue, and all I need to do is pull it up and back, soften and add a bit of lavender to model it more. That should give the sternomastoid the space it needs.

I'm ready to dig out the brushes!