This is a portrait of a friend of mine, Joseph Castro. He posed for it over 9 months, a couple of times a week. This is the most advanced portrait I have made. I have always liked the Renaissance portraits of the young aristocratic Florentines such as Bronzino's  Portrait of a Young Man. But there is a lot more going on in this work than a likeness. Again, I love to pull together a core element of the subject and tie it to the means. While looking for the right position and light for his head I saw his slightly raised eye brow and a lightly mocking curl of his lip. Bingo! That is the painting. Joseph's  good-natured archness could be integrated well with the technical theme of accenting arch motifs throughout the painting. Please go to my tutorial on Rhythm: A Beautiful Way to Organize Chaos, in which I go into detail about how I did this.