March 9th Portrait study

Hello again, Hoshigetsu. Nice job on your control and understanding of edges, gestures, forces, spaces, relationships, lights, shadows, and gestalts of your facial digital painting as well. But still, I'm not too crazy about the lack of a really natural sense of caricature and distortion. How would you like to please loosen yourself up with a 30 minute class mode of faces and expressions, except with drawing from your underhanded positions, except with either hand?

The logical conclusion is that if you would like to go for this suggestion, then your understanding of faces and their unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy can and will become less timid and more bold and confident in their knowledge. So, furthermore, if you'd like to learn more about drawing faces in gesture form, I'd suggest referencing the facial muscles of the Frank Netter book, even it's for med students, too.

Let's hope they can and shall, and will benefit you.

You captured proportions and likeness correctly, and you use darkness values effectively to show the volume of the head in space.

However, I would highly advise you to tone down on using the digital blending. It makes the skin look too smooth, featureless and mechanical, and you lose all sharp edges of the shadow shapes.

If you look at the part to the right and under the ear (which is also right smack in the centre of the piece) it looks like the ear and the hair are floating over a misty landscape, as you lost all details on the skin by overblending, with the details of the ear and the hair in stark contrast.

Especially in an extremely lighted reference like this, you should really dare to keep the sharp corners of the shadows instead of meshing them into an undistinct smoothness.