Portrait painting - Please help!

[SarahJL]

Hi, I've been working on this portrait for a little while now. I know it's not right in comparison to the photo, but I can't figure out what exactly! It's driving me nuts. 
This is only my second oil painting so I would really love some criticism and helpful tips. Thanks!

[Admbrns]

Hi, I've been working on this portrait for a little while now. I know it's not right in comparison to the photo, but I can't figure out what exactly! It's driving me nuts. 
This is only my second oil painting so I would really love some criticism and helpful tips. Thanks!

I think you've done a good job. Good color choices. The upper lip angles are off. Top of the lip and the line seperating the lips. Other than that, the eyes seem to be slightly larger in your painting. 

I can't oil paint myself, so over all I'm impressed 

[xelfereht]

i haven't done much oil painting, but just looking at your results so far.. its quite the likeness but looks a bit scratchy. All the strokes are more like tiny dabs of paint and if that is a conscious choice for the look that is ok i suppose. You might want to try blocking out bigger shapes of colour early on and building out the face towards the smaller details. starting with the big shapes will give you a good base to continually measure your face proportions. some bolder strokes might make the portrait a bit more striking too.
just my thoughts, that said it looks quite nice :)

[meat]

Things will look different (lighter, darker, colors look different...) once you fill the background colors in, so I suggest you do so as soon as possible. Unless that is your final background look. So far so good :) Keep an eye out for the overall big shape of the eye sockets, which will be further brought up once you have the surroundings painted in.

[ZombieChinchilla]

I would recommend filling in the rest of the colors, once you put in the black of the hoodie it will really change the values and colors, so do that before you get too farther in rendering. I would say squint your eyes when looking at the reference and focus on the shapes of the values. The highlights on the side of the face are much brighter in your ref, and there's a lot more highlight in more places on your painting as a result.

Nice work, though, keep going!

[pabnav]

It's looking good so far!
I agree with ZombieChinchilla, it might be easier working the whole thing instead completing an area before jumping into the next (remember, our color perception depends on adjacent colors). It's a bit of a struggle to some of us because we tend to get caught in rendering details, but in the end you end up saving time anf geting a cleaner result, talking from experience.

You are doing great , keep it up!