I work predominantly in oils. Commissioning a portrait is a collaborative affair between myself and my subject and during the process I want to find out what they're hoping for and how they would like to be portrayed. I usually proceed through a combination of sittings and photographs to enable me to capture some of their character and of course a likeness!  If sittings are impossible I can talk through what I might require from photographs and then agree together with them which images best represent them.