Thankyou Pat, your encouragement is really appreciated.

My 4th head, the head gear is a cut out.

I really like the way you shaded and accented his hair and beard!

Head4

You are doing some amazing work here RJKD. The lips on the last one are really realistic - any tips for me? I really hope you do more of these faces as you are improving rapidly.

High praise coming from you Erisian, thank you for your encouragement. I use a lot of Gaussian blur. One aspect I'm struggling to nail is getting a blend from the lips to the skin, for me they still look 'stuck on'. My go to reference is your excellent tutorials...
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7053

You are doing a wonderful job, RJKD. Keep on! OH, Yes, Erisian is a good teacher. I always enjoy his creations and wish he could participate more. But then, I know myself that life often gets in the way.

I enjoy seeing your quick progress, RJKD. Your results are very good and I know you will reach your aim very soon.

The wide shadow under the lips goes too far around. If you try keeping it to the middle you may find your lips look more a part of the face.

RJKD, While looking at your painting, I noticed that her Rt. Eyelashes are much shorter than the Lt ! She is a beauty anyway!

Not bad! You have some very nice face studies here! May I suggest that you are at a point where you might want to start considering the light a little more. For example, your latest female face is very evenly lit - she is essentially lit face-on with a diffuse white light. Considering the dark background this is an unusual light condition to have outside of a photo-studio. So consider experimenting with changing the light direction.

A nice way to experiment with light is to start with an even-lit face like you have and then create a medium-opacity Multiply-mode layer on top of it. On that layer, work not with black but with a darker hue of her skin (add a little blue to it for extra effect) in order to sketch out the fall of shadows. On a Normal-mode layer (again with a low opacity) you can then add highlights to surfaces facing your chosen light direction.

The good thing with using multiply/normal layers is that you can easily experiment without messing up the original face. you can also quickly try different lighting conditions to best bring out the face. Using light will also give you the chance to show off 3D features of the face that are not visible on an even-lit face, like the eyelids, cheeks and the length of the nose (the latter can of course also be shown by rotating the face, but this is a more complex affair and less easy to toy around with).

Just some suggestions, enjoy and keep training, good work so far!
.
Griatch

Pat, Issabella, Erisian and Griatch, thank you so much for your constructive feedback, you have given me some great tips to work on

5 - our Jasmine...

Beautiful work!

Thankyou Erisian

RJKD: To my completely untrained eye you seem to have made a huge amount of progress in a very short time. Way to go - as they say!

Skinnyhouse, your encouragement helps and is appreciated

head 11, blue...

Well done RJKD