Liepke study

I recently bought a huge book of Liepke's work called "Malcolm Liepke: A Retrospective" which has tons of huge reproductions in which you can see every brushstroke! It also has several chapters where he talks about his approach.

I had planned on doing a few studies of eyes, mouths, and noses as homework but I quickly realized that his approach to painting these features wasn't just formulaic. They don't work on their own... what gives his faces so much power is the emotion created through the facial features and the color pallet.