Critique Wanted

[steelconfusion]

Hey CA, it's been a few years. I've come a ways since being 14 (roughly when I last posted like a whiny teenager). I'm in a position where I want (and need) good, honest critique. I'm obviously seeking to improve, and I have a lot of catching up to do. So here is my latest portrait, I know you guys will help me out.

[TinyBird]

Attach the image, you are likely to get more people looking at it (people don't really like links): http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=221049

As for the pic, study more of the faces planes and you probably ought to stick with grayscale still.

[shiNIN]

What TinyBird said.
And it would be good to see the skull and not those crazy strands for now. The hair isn't all bad at all but the strands are somewhat illogical, random and I can't imagine a normal shaped skull under them.
The face mostly tells me the head is slightly turned down, the eyes aren't like that, they are too high and even a bit too big.

[Lulie]

Don't use black/grey for shading -- makes things look dirty. Instead, colour-pick a darker version of the local colour. (You may even consider doing coloured shadows from another light source or bounced light. For instance, the side of her cheek should definitely have red reflected light on it from her hair.)

The catchlights almost in the middle of her eyes look a bit strange. Usually it's most attractive to have them slightly to one side. If the light were moved so that would happen, it would create more appearance of form in the shadows, too. Light tends to look bad if it's too close to the camera (because light is supposed to emulate the sun, and the sun is never shining from behind the viewer's eyes...).

If you post the reference picture we can give more detailed/useful comments.

[steelconfusion]

Here is the reference photo used. Thanks all for the help so far. For now I'm redoing it in black and white in junction with working through Andrew Loomis' "Heads and Hands". Any other suggestions as far as what I can do to gain some better understanding of portraits?

[Lulie]

Any other suggestions as far as what I can do to gain some better understanding of portraits?

- Don't forget to flip the image to see mistakes. (Symmetry issues are especially important if you're trying to do attractive portraits.)

- Watch your edges. For example, you have very hard edges on the nose, whereas in the photo they're soft.

- Avoid doing outlines for lips. You have a dark outline around her top lip, whereas in the photo if anything it's a light one.

- Consider checking out more advance face construction, like planes (Loomis mentions them but I gather the best way to understand them is through a 3D model) or the Reilly method. Ron Lemen teaches it well, here or here. Nathan Fowkes also has some demos of an adapted Reilly method: here, here and here.

[steelconfusion]

Thank you for all of the advice. I'm struggling to implement the Reilly Method into this image. Do you have any tips as far as how to do that? Thank you so much for all of your help!