I have made this painting to practice painting the female head. My goal was to get more experience painting skin tones.
I have used this photo as reference.
One of my favourite artist Selene has shared a video that shows her painting process. I really like how she builds up the skin. I wanted to try this method, where you start with painting the the bigger tones first, and add details as you go. Basically you can build up a face with painting in big areas of a given value. You will know that it is a face even if you only use full black on a white surface.
I think the base skin color I choose was too dark to begin with. Her skintone is quite light so I had to lighten up my painting when I had already painted the highlights and added more details too.
I will practice more painting skin and faces. This girl portrait took 3 hours to paint which I think is a good result. I have not made any lineart, I only did a light sketch. I like working this way. I have more freedom painting. I can easily correct things if needed.