I'd like to begin with the I started after the eye. Originally, I was going to use an old drawing (posted in creativity thread) of mine but decided to go a different direction. I instead decided to use my own face as reference to make this:

Circus inspired. Actually Cirque du Soleil inspired. :-) This is a prelude to the fourth piece I'll be doing that will feature some extreme body bending.

I'm thinking that white is a little too white but it'll have to do for now. There's no lightsource as I haven't figured out where it's coming from. I'm pretty sure, though, that there'll be shadows on that face but, I was looking at some pictures in one of the Cirque programs I have and saw that there weren't too many dramatic shadows on the painted faces. I'd just like to know what you guys think of the eyes and AA. I wanted to make the transition between white and the colors to be very smooth but I'm not sure if what I did was correct.
When I read the new challenge at Pixeljoint, I thought and put the circus piece on hold see if I can actually get this done within a week. This is indeed a rough wip but here goes:

I drew from a picture of a bust in my art history book and using the actual picture for lightsource. The finished product should look like a magazine cover for "The Roman Woman". The woman featured is wearing the "flavian" hairstyle popular among the elite women around the time of Emporor Hadrian. The hair, I know, will be very difficult but what I'm most concerned about is the shading.
Is dithering the best solution for this especially if I'm to use only 3 colors? OKay so I know I'll have to dither but I just can't seem to find a pattern that would be good for a smooth surface...