two older portrait paintings

I am finishing up a still-life painting right now (which I look forward to posting) but I thought I would post a couple of portrait commissions from 2006. In the first piece, "Stacey and Riley", I was very interested in the formal concepts of composition, specifically the dominant element, subdominant element, subordinant elements, and accents. The woman in the painting would be the dominant element, the child the subdominant, the arm of the sofa an example of a subordinate element, and the flower petals and the polka-dots on the girl's dress accents. I think about these concepts on every painting I do. The painting of my grandfather "Big Jack", below, was originally intended as a demonstration piece. Both pieces are life-size.