I saw an amazing photo on DA and I said to myself that I must paint it.

I asked for the photographer permission and he allowed me to paint it.

But...it's much harder than the hands from Twilight...now it's a face...and I think I won't make it good xD

But if I do, then I can call myself a real painter P:

This is the real photo, took by Chris Laitz: 

 http://sapirlapid.deviantart.com/#/d31spnz

Now, I started to sketch by looking, just like on twilight. (Of course it doesn't finished yet)

It doesn't seem right..Like...I need to make it more curvy..

Well I tried to put the source image on other layer with low opacity and draw the lines:

 But I think it's cheating right? If so..I would delete it...

 (Please don't tell me things like "Leave it, it's too hard for you"...I already know it..it's a great challenge)

In my opinion, tracing the image on a low opacity is not good at all if you want to learn from your painting. Try instead the first method. In order to get the correct proportions you can draw a grid over the photo and copy (not trace) the features of the face. This way you'll learn to see what is really there. Your mind can play tricks, if you see her eyes, your mind can say: they're the same, both left and right. But if you watch the eyes, you can see her left eye its a bit more open than her right one.

Another way to get the proportions very quickly is the typical, ancient, and effective method of stretch your arm with the pencil in your hand and taking measures with the thumb. I use this method a lot when I need to draw something accurately and it works pretty well.

Cano:

In my opinion, tracing the image on a low opacity is not good at all if you want to learn from your painting. Try instead the first method. In order to get the correct proportions you can draw a grid over the photo and copy (not trace) the features of the face. This way you'll learn to see what is really there. Your mind can play tricks, if you see her eyes, your mind can say: they're the same, both left and right. But if you watch the eyes, you can see her left eye its a bit more open than her right one.

Another way to get the proportions very quickly is the typical, ancient, and effective method of stretch your arm with the pencil in your hand and taking measures with the thumb. I use this method a lot when I need to draw something accurately and it works pretty well.

Thank you for the great tips!

The second one: Do you mean I need to count like "the space between the top hair and the eyes is 2 thumbs"?

And I saw that the right eye is closer. It's because she's smiling on this side and the cheek pushes the eye :) 

I'm sure you've seen this many times in photos, videos and more. Stretch your arm with the pencil in your hand. Put the top of the pencil over one point of the model, then move your thumb to take the measure to another point. Then translate it to your drawing. As long as you are always at the same distance from your model and you take and translate the measures with the arm in the same position, the measures will be fairly correct. Of course this is useful to check and correct proportions and measures, the first sketches should be drawn by observation.

And yes, I noticed you drawed one eye more closed than the other 

Cheers!

The grid solution is the BEST!

I didn't imagine in my dream that painting can be such an easy thing.

I didn't do much but I just liked how the lips look now, Im afraid to destroy it somehow ^^"
After I done with the face...I will have to do the hair..this will be my worst nightmare ever :O do you have some tips on painting the hair?

So what do you think for now? For somereason, the right side is brighter than the left side (On the orginal photo) so that's what I painted.

A little update.

I didn't do much because I had 2 final tests this week...so busy :O

And also I tried to join the weekly challenge and left it. Shame on me ><"

I know I have some issue with the noise. I think it should have more width.