I did a new digital painting practice piece, which you can see here!

Things incorporated:

• I put more effort into the anatomy, basing major decisions and proportions off of multiple still photography references.
• Used a patchy charcoal brush around the external perimeter of the color groups to add a sense of texture.
• Used the same brush for areas where lighting and different color groups come into soft contact.
• Used a sharper looking image for the specular reflection of the eye (if you zoom way in, it looks like an open window (cold light) next to a ringlight (warm light) on a tripod).

Things to improve:

• I was more tame with the color palette than the previous image and I think that lead to the palette not being very unified.
• I may have also gone too mild on subsurface scattering, especially visible on the hips.
• Face shading is maybe more aggressive than the body shading?
• Composition is a bit drab, though that may just be a side effect of it being a simple portrait at a flat angle with standard lens.

Other notes:

The style of face and body is more what I try to do when I'm putting in an effort to make something look nice. The face and body style from #1 were more "anime" style because I was trying to push the lineart done and get into colors. I don't know if I need to change that up, because I feel like my current art style looks like a failed/very amateur attempt at photorealism, while photorealism has never been my goal. It might miscommunicate what I'm going for and end up making the impression of the drawing/painting worse than it should be.

Conclusion:

I like the painting, but as always, improvement is needed. I think the anatomy and overall painting method is better, but I think the composition is still a bit boring, and the palette is too drab. I'd like to hear your thoughts about it if you have any!