An excellent entry, my only advice would be to move away from a 'photo-realistic' art style. Granted this is really a personal opinion, but in today's era of photographs and hyper realistic 3D graphics, its not really worth the 4+ hours of attempting to render realistic tones features and textures in either tradition or as I occasionally do; traditional paint.
Focus instead on dynamic expressive strokes and good tonal values; do it quickly and elegantly. Your skill here is solid and of excellent standard (if you plan on doing this again work on the eyes a bit more; its always the eyes that put you in uncanny valley). As an artist you should always focus on the 'big picture' little details like beard hair and the like are to be 'suggested'; putting down enough information will mean your brain fills the rest of the details.
In terms of what I mean this is probably a good example: Moddb.com
Here you can see that the artist hasn't gone into painstaking detail but has suggested it with brushstrokes and good tone. The strokes are clearly visible but we still get a clear image of the mans skin tone and 6 o'clock shadow.
By all means continue to do more of these images; its great stuff and always makes for great fun and practice. Just don't get to into it. That way you can save hundreds of hours (which I alone have wasted) chasing and achieving standard that doesn't warrant the effort required to reach it.
An excellent entry, my only advice would be to move away from a 'photo-realistic' art style. Granted this is really a personal opinion, but in today's era of photographs and hyper realistic 3D graphics, its not really worth the 4+ hours of attempting to render realistic tones features and textures in either tradition or as I occasionally do; traditional paint.
Focus instead on dynamic expressive strokes and good tonal values; do it quickly and elegantly. Your skill here is solid and of excellent standard (if you plan on doing this again work on the eyes a bit more; its always the eyes that put you in uncanny valley). As an artist you should always focus on the 'big picture' little details like beard hair and the like are to be 'suggested'; putting down enough information will mean your brain fills the rest of the details.
In terms of what I mean this is probably a good example: Moddb.com
Here you can see that the artist hasn't gone into painstaking detail but has suggested it with brushstrokes and good tone. The strokes are clearly visible but we still get a clear image of the mans skin tone and 6 o'clock shadow.
By all means continue to do more of these images; its great stuff and always makes for great fun and practice. Just don't get to into it. That way you can save hundreds of hours (which I alone have wasted) chasing and achieving standard that doesn't warrant the effort required to reach it.