Thanks Rachael for this class! This was quite challenging, as I worked on my own reference photo with brownish tones, sort of black and white, and chose to keep the lovely blue colors you made for your background. And on top of it, I initially messed up the lighting. I had the left side background totally light blue-turquoise, had to fix it, but after the fact I can not get it darker, even adding black. 

And I kept working on her face, fixing details until I got lost in the details and totally overworked it. It doesn't even look like the real person (a friend of mine)! Her mouth ended up crooked, esp. the lines between nose and mouth (philtrum?). 

I will need to re-do it, maybe work on another photo or something, but this approach is so much harder than a realistic one!