Took these photos before I was done, but it gives you an idea of where it ended up. Whole project of resuscitating a 6 year old piece was interesting because I was putting new oil paint on top of old, completely dry paint.

[Fer instance, I repainted all of the boy's face except his nose (and after this photo, all of the hair), and on the man, the hair plus all the features--a very extensive repainting.]

This is an issue because normally when you paint over "dry" paint, you have to worry about the new paint drying flat; why this is, I'm not sure. On other pieces, I would counter this by covering the old paint with this obscure medium called copal--it's like super-thick linseed oil. Copal worked well, but it's icky and dries really slowly. This time the paint was so dry, I figured I'd risk it and just prep the old paint with a little spray varnish. on't know if it worked for a month or so....

But it's kind of a moot point--I gave the painting as a gift, and the recipient (and family) just looked on in confusion and not a little discomfort and said, "Uh, thanks." And with that, they deposited it in a corner.

You never know how people will react....