Gabrielle
 

Would like some input on this, I know I need to soften her mouth some. Her mother has seen it and thinks I captured her "essence" but I feel like something is off.

Reference
 

I actually worked from a couple of things, but this was the main one.

The mother is right. You've captured her essence, and gotten a good likeness. There are a few things that could use tweaking.

It looks to me like her nose is off a little. The nostril on our left looks off, but when I compare it to the photo, it's hard to tell what's wrong. It's something subtle.

I'm guilty of drawing a line between lips, but I guess I can only see the problem on other people's work. Look in the photo. The "line" isn't a line at all. It's a shape, that happens to fall on a linear path.

The edge of the face, on our left, could be softened, to indicate that it is turning away from the viewer.

Buy more pastels. I think you need a fuller range of colors to match the darker values in fleshtones. The shading on the neck and nose is a muddy color. Maybe not muddy so much as not soft enough for this sitter. It looks like a color that would work in a man's portrait. In the photo, these shaded areas are a soft, almost light color.

Hmm
 

My reply didn't post, let me try this again!

Jeff, I agree with all of your observations and will address them all. The timing of your post was interesting, as I was reading the part about buying more pastels, the doorbell rang, it was the postman delivering my box of 18 unisons, 30 Schminckes, 80 half stick senneliers, 96 nupastels and a large tin of pastel pencils! YEAH!!! I think my pastel supply just more than doubled..now let me go play with my new toys!:santa: :D

Mary,

On the mouth, which on this subject is a very soft, fleshy form with subtle but characterizing structure, I would add just a couple of things to look at. 1) As I look at the upper edge of the upper lip, following it from corner to corner of the mouth, I see more of an arc with very slight modulations, rather than a more articulated cupid

The sheer volume of pastels is reason enough for me to avoid them. I have a Daniel Greene pastel video. He's working next to a table specially designed to hold pastels. He has literally hundreds of them. They're all arranged by hue. Where an oil painter would have a tube of rose madder and white, he has a separate pastel for each shade that he would have on a palette. It's staggering the number of them needed.

If you don't have his pastel videos, I'd highly recommend them.