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A classy set-up, very well rendered. You're obviously an observant and accomplished draftsperson. The sheen in the dress fabric is nicely understated but suggestive of richness and elegance.
Some miscellaneous thoughts as I work around the piece:
-- The overall colour presentation is very cool in temperature, almost without relief. A couple of days ago the red ink jet on my colour printer clogged and for a while I got green and lightly pink reproductions of one of my still-life paintings. (It was actually pretty interesting, very artsy, no doubt MOMA would have agreed to handle them for me.) That's the impression I have here. The furniture and background are of course contributing to that, but first in order would be, I believe, to get some life's blood into your flesh tones. Certainly you're going to have some cooler passages, but in order to be effective they need to be vibrating against warmer passages. The lighting here is greatly exacerbating the problem, as its cool "headlight" strength is overpowering the flesh tones -- so much so that some of your highlights in the flesh are virtually the same hue and tone as the white sofa fabric. It appears, especially from looking at areas like the shadow under the chin, that you may have worked from a flash photograph; if that's the case, then this is one of the hazards to be mindful of.
-- The contrast between the lighted chin and jawline and the shadow underneath on the neck is too great -- it's separating her head from her neck. Probably start with darkening those areas on the face, as well as the too-bright highlight areas on the neck below the cast shadow. The shadow in the temple on the viewer's right is very dark as well, seeming out of tonal context. Perhaps something to look at first, though, is whether the cheek area on that side shouldn't be considerably darker as it turns away from the light and approaches the hair.
-- Overmodeling, especially with too-bright lights, in the face around the mouth has created a two- or perhaps even three-chin effect. Even if there's "some" of that going on here, I suggest that a flattering flattening of the tones in that area would put you in grateful stead with this portrait subject.
-- Where the pearl necklace passes into cast shadow as it rounds the neck, it will be influenced by that shadow just as is the neck, rather than remaining brilliant white.
-- Even allowing for the long fingernails, I think the fingers taper a bit too quickly. There's a round fleshy pad underneath that distal joint of the finger. Also, the dark shadow on top of the middle finger, right next to the ring, is causing some distortion in that finger.
I was hoping by this time to have had the universe offer me some intuition about the sofa and the background. Drat -- I'll just have to wing it. I think the colourlessness of those areas is draining the piece of a lot of warmth and energy and richness that it could have. I'm not set up here to PhotoShop this to see what, say, a gold sofa fabric and a maroon background would do. (I'm visualizing a dark, rich background contrasting with the fleshtones in the shoulders.) I mention those hues simply as temperature complements to the cool-green dress. Many other possibilities exist, of course. Finally, I think the style of the sofa -- especially that target sized circle shining brightly right in the foreground, is problematic.
I'll quit there for now and see how this goes over.
Very nice work overall,
Steven
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