I did a new digital painting practice piece, which you can see here! Constructive criticism is appreciated!

Building upon the positive changes from the last practice piece, I put extra emphasis on likeness. I tend to lose likeness in the jaw profile, eyes, and nose, so that's where I focused.

Things incorporated:

• I added hard lines along certain shadows to increase their perceived edge sharpness - especially on the chin and eyes. I feel this helped create a better illusion of subsurface scattering and added a positive stylistic touch.
• I put extra focus on the eye and nose shape, as these are key to achieving proper likeness. I've come to find that this part of the face is referred to as "the T-zone" and is how facial recognition software recognizes faces, which is a concept based on the most recognizable features that people see when they look at a face - so that's obviously where the developmental focus needs to go for now.

Things to improve:

• I've noticed that the drawing display I use (a Huion with an IPS panel) has significantly better color depth/range than my TN panel primary monitor and VG panel side monitor. The color depth looks very nice on my IPS, but is desaturated on my TN and VG. I need to figure out a way to make my color selection look good on an IPS panel as well as lower-cost panels.
• I need to find a better way to execute "smooth" lighting. The look I'm trying to emulate is very common in anime-style full color illustrations, but it seems the tools I use for highlights don't give a very smooth outline, and this causes some choppiness. I can eliminate it with use of a soft eraser and smudge tool with a very soft edge, but this is inefficient. I need to find or make a better tool specifically for highlighting skin.

Other notes:

This didn't feel like nearly as much of a challenge or experiment as the last two (and another two I didn't post). It feels like the improvements I'm pushing in now are changing from sweeping fundamental learning to granular technical improvement, which is nice. I was also able to finish this far faster than the other two, though that could just be because it's focused on the face rather than a bust.

Conclusion:

I like the piece. Still needs work in some technical aspects that will probably fill themselves out with time and experience. My process is getting more efficient. Need to figure out a way to make the colors pop on less saturated displays without ruining the look on higher-fidelity displays and look into finding/making a better brush specifically for skin (and maybe making specific tool groups for skin, hair, and material types).