Hello, not a critique, but a couple of questions. 1. Why did you make the background the darkest area? In terms of value range, you kept it pretty close on the face, but then the background is a black. Because of this, the range widens to accommodate the background, and then suddenly it looks like the face is underlit. 2. Why did you put the background on the side of the face? I always thought you added darkness to highlight a bordering bright, or to fade shadows into the background. Instead, I see a clear distinction for the eye socket shadow and BG, and not much stark contrast between light and shadow (only on the forehead and cheek). But yeah, I'm not very good at shading, and was wondering why you made these decisions. I've attached pictures to show what I mean. If you'd like, I have a .psd file with all my edits, so you can mess around with them, thought I think it's too big to be put as an attachment here.