paint-over 2

per Vince's request.
i saved them out as steps to keep the bla bla bla to a minimum.

another disclaimer, these paintovers are just quick studies, 45 min - an hour. just enough to scrub in some of the biggest issues. it would be pointless to really fine-tune it out as it would just end up being a huge departure from the original instead of making it an object to learn from.
also, unless you've calibrated your monitor, it's probably too light. if you're using a public computer, this is almost always the case. generally speaking: your 'brightness' level should be somewhere around 50-60%, while your 'contrast level' should probably be somewhere between 60-90%. in a dark room, a swatch of black should look black, not dark gray, and white should look white but not be glaring you in the face.

the biggest issue is how muddy things are. lightened it up, and adjusted the lighting of the background to be consistent with the top down set-up on the figure. Tyler has a similar thing going on in his portrait.

this is to mimic really squinting your eyes to see the value relationships. overall the figure is done pretty good in terms of top down. it was lacking a few distinguishing planes, but the biggest issue is the consistency of the hair. the shadow side just wasn't really darker than the light side.

just some refinements in the modeling and details. the biggest issue was the hair. it fell behind the neck, but there was no ear behind the bangs. so i just brought it forward instead of painting in an ear. and always remember catchlights in the eyes, it gives it life. even if there isn't that photographic key light reflecting into the eye, there are those little points that are reflections in the wetness of the eyeball. without them you either have a corpse or a statue.

this phase actually should have been done first, when you flip it you can see the issues in the structure much more easily. being that for you this is an actual painting, you need to find a mirror to hold it up into. correct your structure before moving on to anything else.

for comparison. and i included the color for kicks, just layed the colors over the modified B/W, you can see the discrepancies in the modifications. didn't modify the color, maybe another time.