I have always maintained that the better the photo the better the painting. What do I mean? It's not generally what you look for in a photo for a photo's sake. The sun is important and even if parts are bleached out it makes for a good composition as you group the lights and darks. Many photos do not have a distinction between the light and the dark and that makes it total invention on the part of the artist. With the sun shining from one direction, the images are lit uniformly on one side of the figure or still life or landscape. It's easy to pick up reflected light which is, perhaps, the main area people are focused on when they appreciate a painting.
I have found that a wide angle lens is superb for capturing a scene. I now am using digital but this was from kodachrome, an excellent source of perfect warm light.
First I drew in the composition with alizarin crimson from the photo below
Then I covered it with a burnt umber wash and started introducing sap green, burnt umber into the background. As I got closer to the face I made it a little warmer with some cad red light so the face would appear to be in the atmosphere of the garden and not just pasted on top of it.
