I love the concept! They way you painted your shoulder kind of like a jagged mountain is cool too.

Hi @jjk, nice work! I tried doing a quick paint-over to address the critique you were looking for. In terms of proportions, I think the biggest changes I made were moving the lip/mouth area a bit more forward, giving her more of a chin, and making the eyes just a bit smaller. The eye thing is especially common for a lot of artists. We tend to make eyes bigger than they really are because that's what we tend to focus on when looking at someone's face. I think different people will have different advice regarding likeness, but the biggest tip that I've found to be useful is to squint your eyes until the portrait becomes a pattern of light and dark shapes and you can no longer see specific details like eyes, nose, etc. I've provided a blurred out image to simulate what an image will look like when you squint your eyes. So, what I do is I hone in on the pattern of light and dark shapes created by the face (I laid those out in dark blue), and I make sure that when I draw my portrait, those light and dark masses match that of the reference image. This is most effective when you've already laid in the proportions of the head, so this would probably be something to keep in mind at about your second or third step of the drawing process. Hopes this helps, and feel free to let me know if I can clear anything up for you!