For Halloween I painted a spooky portrait based on an old, faded and overexposed photo. 
Part of what made it creepy was that it was in fact a caricature of the original image. What would it take to make the painting less of a caricature and more like a realistic portrait?
Surprisingly, it is not adding details, but rather substracting and muting the idiosyncratic traits of the subject that creates a more pleasing portrait. Caricatures of us seem to resemble our own faces more than photos do. But a more flattering painting mutes the things that make us look like ourselves in favor of what we have in common with the rest of humanity.
