I don't know why but I decided it was time to do another portrait painting practice. And this time in colour. The last one of these I did was ages ago in black and white ( http://i.imgur.com/jmyarEe.jpg ).

I've been thinking there are a lot of things I need to practice, realistic colour (particularly on skin), shading, faces in general i've been kinda out of practice on. 
So why not do them all at once? (Pro tip: don't do things all at once) 
After placing my base colours I started with the background (non blurred), then the skin, lips eye, hair, and finally the headphones then touch ups. Then lastly blurred the background to finish up. This was one and a half days of solid work. I'm not sure i'm entirely happy with the product, but boy did I learn a ton doing it. Even if I threw myself in the deep end to do it (I learn best this way really, but I wouldn't recommend it for stress levels )

Obviously since It's a practice work I worked straight from a reference (can't go making up stuff if your trying to learn the way things are lol)
The lovely reference is here: http://kaydenfrei.deviantart.com/art/Music-275035089 by Faestock on DA
Obviously I cropped it in a bit, and if you look at it you can see a few of my colours still arn't quite right.