Painting bravura portraits begins with first striking the big shape and massing/blocking-in the primary light/dark pattern. This also initially infers the Notan (light/dark harmony) which sticks the painting to the wall.

Once your measures and plumbs are checked and corrected the initial half-tones are served up in the abstract.

What Sargent meant by 'serving it up in the abstract' was to see through the eyes of a sculptor; distilling the head to its basic planar structures. Sargent advised his students to spend some time painting heads without the features. That way you acquire a deeper understanding of the portrait's underlying architecture.

Michael Britton, Portrait of Louis Betts after William Merritt Chase, 2023

Bravura painting is an additive/subtractive process of applying paint: spotting in color/value notes as if they were pieces of colored clay. The procedure of color spotting is to first, select your color/value; second, place it succinctly; and, third, shape it with a sympathetic concordance to the underlying anatomical form.

As your confidence builds, so, too, will your brush strokes acquire a sureness and clarity that is the essence of Bravura.