I have found that many honest people have done drawings which are very distorted who care not for what is correct and therefore produce pieces which are visually interesting. The majority of these are people who already have a strong background in realism, but there have been outliers. The people who tend to say "Im not going for realism so don't tell me" tend to be people who are perhaps subconciously insecure and try to cover up inexperience with arrogance, but again, sometimes there are people who really just for one peice are not concerned.
I have also found that the majority of people who go on about how you must know forms to distort them (a popular remark) are about one year into their schooling (or even before) and are vomiting back up their professor's words without though and often without usefulness, merit, or even sometimes understanding, and they are throwing ti out there not for the benefit of the artist or the piece, but so they can pat themselves on the ass for knowing better, others though are genuine and think that the advice is proper and well-suited to the topic.
Chris - you are still early in your process but you already have a very strong grasp of greater anatomy. everyone here knows that you are very conscious of form and anatomy. you also say that you haven't truely studied the forms of the face. Some things im sure - the exaggerated chin for example - are purposeful distortions, but if you don't have a strong foundation, do you really know what all is on purpose and what is lack of understanding?
Because you so often concentrate on accuracy and we talked about how you were trying to pixel quickly - not draw accurately, im willing to believe that this is one piece where you simply put aside your typical aims in favor of trying to put out good pixel technique quickly. the fact that you have not recieved many crits on that aspect means that you achieved your goal much more than you thought earlier, which brings me back to our discussion about not hating your work
Helm - we all know you have a lot of experience and I agree with your words here, that the underlying principles are not developed. However, i would say that this piece is the exception to the rule, which is that ryu is typically well-focussed on the important things.
Basically that was a long-winded way of saying that you both make good points and could listen well to each other.
From what you've said ryu this piece has probably gone as far as it will, and should you be lacking inspiration i would strongly encourage your next piece be a study of the structure and form of the human face, both to help your own goals and to help the rest here settle
