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Very beautiful subject, posed in character (and hey, nice trick to get out of having to draw hands!!), very nicely rendered. There are two or three things I'd look at, but I'm stealing time in fits and starts today so I'll have to do it piecemeal.
Compositionally, I think the reflections in the tabletop are way too strong -- too light, too much definition. (I'm not saying a glossy surface couldn't yield that kind of reflection, but I'm focusing here on how much of it you want in the portrait.) In fact, I'd looked at this a couple of times before I realized she wasn't resting her elbows on her knees! (I would have been quite embarrassed to have delivered advices on how to better render the fabric in her jeans.)
I quickly bussed this through PhotoShop to confirm my read on it. Lower the intensity of the reflections by at least half, using some of the reddish hue of the tabletop, rather than just a grayed white (the effect of lowering intensity with the red is actually, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the luminosity of the reflection -- it may even be an opportunity to use a glaze of Light Red or Indian Red (I can't really see whether it should be a warm or cool hue), so that the remaining white shines up through the glaze. Try to grade the value from its lightest part right next to the sweater to progressively darker as it moves away. Also grade the edges from sharpest near the elbows, to very very quickly much softer. And I'd taper off the intensity and the reflection entirely by the time it gets halfway between the elbows and the bottom edge. It makes a far more convincing reflection and it avoids having the viewer's eye follow those reflections right out of the painting. It will also eliminate that big white "diamond" that is competing compositionally with the head, and will give you a nice compositional "triangle" of head to elbows. Finally, that new path of tabletop colour along the bottom will help "frame" the whole piece.
Tip #2 when we return.
Cheers,
Steven
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