color swap to help me look at highlighting/color problems -->
Toyed with the colors some as was suggested. Minor adjustments to pull the highlight down a bit but also reducing the general contrast between some colors and increasing it between a few others. Felt like some of my highlights were too saturated and some of them were the opposite case. Thought maybe the color swap would help me work around the color problems so I tried that out. Ended up removing the total colors by 3 or 4 shades that had shown up accidentally during the process.
Adjusted the nose positioning and widened it a bit. I'm still struggling with getting the nose to feel like it's jutting out so sharply from the face like the references.
I need to pull the eyes inward and get the brows to really jut out more.
The highlighting on top of the head has probably inhibited me quite a bit on that front. I'm thinking about bringing the angle upward on the face so that there is less dome showing.
Took a few minutes to try to alleviate the line across the face between highlighted top/shaded underside. I've been intentionally avoiding doing a lot of texture and clean up on it but I did spend a minute or two taking out single pixel noise here and there to help the shapes stand out.
Thoughts on general improvements I can make from here before proceeding? This project is turning out to be a really strong practice piece for form, shadow, and texture.