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Michele, that's extremely helpful! I tried turning the photo and the painting upside down, which sometimes gives you a fresh perspective, but the monochromatic reversed that you posted is much better. I see what you mean about the exaggerated lines on the mouth (which I must have painted over and over about fifty times to try to capture correctly - you can't even see on this that her lower teeth are just visible above that lower lip, and getting that to work was a nightmare - if I've got it yet!). You're also right about the lower jaw on our right in the painting. I'm not sure I can see the width issue, though; the two faces top and bottom look very similar to me. And when I projected the face in the reference, enlarged it and traced it on clear plastic, the contours were very close to what I have in the painting. Actually I thought the face needed to be a little wider across the upper plane of the cheek bones!
There is a lot more modeling in the original photo - I bleached it out trying to show the features better here and also tried to tone down the contrast in the painting so the eyes weren't so very shadowy. But the main thing that's off, I think, are the shapes, which you've addressed. I'll work on them and see how it goes. I really appreciate your taking the time to manipulate that image to show me where I went awry. I have no idea why I'm having so much trouble with this one!
Thanks!
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