My painted portrait

So here is the first of he final assignments. I chose a portrait done by Lindsay Brown whom i happened to randomly find on Google images while searching for portraits. I enjoy her style and the composition of her painting. I love the vibrant red amongst all the neutrals and the amazing colours she uses in the skin tones. I went back home and photographed myself in the same position as her model...well as close as I could get. As you can see my hands are slightly different as is my hair and the positioning of the material in the clothing...but those are minor details. I wanted to create a replica of her piece but with me in it. I realize we had the choice of changing the structure and other aspects, but i wanted to create as similar a piece as i could. This is something that i cannot do with paint...that's why I love Photoshop, it gives people like me who have a hard time replicating the ability to do so thanks to the UNDO button. There are a lot of layers in this image, so many that i started to get confused. I organized some of them but a lot of them were left unlabeled and mixed...bad idea. there are of course some differences such as the colour of the shadow under the subject which is darker in the original and the back wall looks more painterly. another difference is that I am looking up rather than down, but again, minor differences. I thought this piece turned out rather well.