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Carolyn, I thought your sketch was excellent. As far as the age goes, it looks to me as though there is more distance between the highest part of her hair and her eyebrows in the reference photo than in your work. I suspect that if you enhance the height of that hair the proportions will be more appropriate to the child's actual age. When there is less space between the top of the head and the eyes the person looks older. Otherwise the fullness of the cheeks and the development of the chin on your drawing are all correct for the age of the child in the photo.
Everyone has a different way of approaching a subject, and as Chris says, no one way suits all. I don't graph or use plumblines; I do it all by eye, going back and forth as Steve describes. I start off with a dilute blue wash on the entire canvas and then use more concentrated pigment to sketch in the composition. At the same time, I'm roughing in the likeness (there is a three-step demo on my site.) Once I'm satisfied with both I start adding more color. Occasionally when I'm wrestling with a portrait I'll measure relative distances between eyes and mouth and so forth, comparing the reference photo to the painting (i.e. the distance between the top of the eyebrow and the top of the nostrils is the same as the distance between the bottom of the nose and the chin in the photo; is it the same in the painting?) Another handy trick is to turn the painting and the reference photo upside down and compare them that way (unfortunately that can't be done with a live model - another advantage of using an alternative.) It's amazing what a fresh perspective, literally, this gives you, and you can see discrepancies a lot more clearly. Often they'll just pop right out. Or you'll see that even though something may be nagging at you, it's not the shape that's off. Some people use a mirror but I find it too hard to compare the two that way.
A lot of times I don't bother with any of those techniques but just eye the reference photo and the painting. I find that I need the most help when doing portraits of men with short, conservative haircuts; I suspect that's because there's no fudging the line of the skull and jaw. There's no hairdo to obscure edges and shapes; it's all just out there. Everyone's got his bete noire, I'll bet.
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