Changing focus--playing with acrylics

For some variety, I've left the watercolors aside for a bit and am doing some acrylic painting.  There are lots of flowers in my yard right now and I have 3 old canvases that needed reworking.  Gessoed them out, let them dry and began playing.  First is one I'm not terribly happy with:  Shastas and Roses.  Not enough contrast.  Shastas are lacking in definition.  Second is a bit better, Shastas alone with a lot of palette knife work.  Last is from a photo sent to me by a friend (Thanks, Anna!).  I may work this one over a bit more:  Tea and Roses. 

Portrait Workings

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on skin tones in portraits and while I don't have them quite right yet, I feel I've made some progress.  This group of Red Hatters game me permission to "shoot" them this past spring.  I told the "Queen," Irene that I wanted ATTITUDE and they gave it to me!  Absolutely fun group to work with!  I have two more portaits to go to get them all finished but wanted to post the ones I have finished now and see where I need to go next in my learning process.  The four ladies here are 1...Janine, 2.... Irene "the Queen"   3....Tanna and  4....Karen.  They were all great sports and I plan to give them the portaits I've done of them when we all get back down to Yuma this fall.