Well that escalated quickly (from the value study to the painting) XD
I know there was a fair bit of work between those two but escalating quickly is more amusing ;D
Things always have a surprising amount of detail when you actually look at them don't they.
I don't mess around. 😀
(Well try not to.)
Normally I wouldn't even do a value study and just dive straight in. I have an online student that I am guiding along, so I've had to introduce intermediate steps to train him to "see". At first he was a bit doubtful about that, thinking it was not so important. But now he's really starting to appreciate where I'm guiding him and realising, it won't a few simple workshops to get there.
The devil is in the details as they say, and this is also true for painting realism. The solution is to ignore the details in the beginning, focus on the big picture (pun) and only in the latter stages, attend to details, if at all.