intense lighting confusion

[moonskittles]

I'm working on this piece right now, and I'm liking where it's going, but I'm still not happy with her face. I'm not sure what to do with the skin above her lips;not matter what I do, it doesn't look quite right.
Note that this isn't done, so I know the rest of it looks very unfinished. General help would be accepted, but I'm mostly looking for help on the lighting and her face. Paintovers welcome.
Thank you all in advance!

[Kaffinated]

Is there any reference pictures that you are using? If not i would strongly recommend you take a reference picture set up with similer lighting. It would help you plenty!

[moonskittles]

I suppose you're right. I wonder if I have a light bright enough...
Thank you!

[freiheit]

either way, it will help you get where the light is suposed to bounce, and that's already a good start

[Sepulverture]

Understand how insanely bright this lightsource is, and work with it.

What you have here looks like it was lighted by a cigarette lighter, and then the super bright light was added in as an afterthought. I don't believe that's what really happened but it looks that way none the less.

When doing intense lighting like this keep in mind that such a strong light so close to so many surfaces is going to create a lot of bounced light, even from such light absorbing surfaces as the material of that cloak that the (rabbits fur? what is the character anyway?)

The contrast shown here is quite low. The degree of dark in a picture should be proportionate to the degree of bright. If you have a neutral diffused light source then your shadows will be low in contrast and without strong directional indication, and likewise with a super strong light source you'll have super strong highly directional shadows.

[moonskittles]

Hm. I see what you mean. I'll have to work on that aspect of it. And I hadn't quite decided what the cloak was made out of, although I guess I should. As for who she is... uh... she's some sort of mage. Carrying a shiny inside her cloak, and peeking at it. I wish I had more of a backstory for her; I usually do, but that's all I've got so far.
Here's my changes so far, as well as my reference picture. It was the closest light I had to the one in the picture.
I'm not so happy with her forehead yet. I'm trying to figure out if her skin is too saturated, as she has somewhat darker skin than me and her light is more yellow.

[moonskittles]

Added more shading, reworked the hood, dimmed the light slightly.
Not sure if the shadows on the face are intense enough yet. Going to add more jewelery possibly.

[Sepulverture]

The skin on your subject here is still a wee bit saturated. When painting colors that are going from bright to dark such as this keep in mind that your color palette will be very lightly saturated if the color is very bright, like the core of a light or an extremely bright/high-light surface, and the darker you go generally the more saturated you should go.

[moonskittles]

Ah, yeah. I was suspecting as much. Thank you!