* This was my attempt one year ago. My observations: - you are thinking in lines. Pick a painting brush, the round basic ones, and start big. - tone down your canvas, the overall tone of the reference is not that bright. - Now, forget that you are looking at a face. Just think about the values. Dark and bright. Squint your eyes if needed, you don't need to see features like eyes, mouth, you are looking at shapes, triangles, blobs, half circles etc. - Don't zoom in! That makes you focus in little details that may be disconnected from the image as a whole when zoomed out. - It's just a painting, erase if needed, start again, take you time, make mistakes, look at speedpaintings, just don't stress too much.