Illustrator Portrait Art | Female Portrait

Hello, hope everyone is doing well! I am new to this "graphic-artist-community-thing" so I apologize in advance for anything I mess up on or say incorrectly. Now, let's get to the process.

Firstly, I found an image online that showcased the right woman I wanted to portray.

Secondly, I traced a general outline of her,. I created her eyes first, nose second, and lips third. After getting a good outline for all the facial features & some of the right colors, I was able to do the hair next along with the face and neck. All separated by layers, of course.

Next, I got all the facial features to a point that I liked (after tweaking them all multiple times) and began to assemble all the components on top of each other.

Lastly, I did some shadowing. This step took some time because the original picture didn't have a solid light source or visible shadowing so I did pretty much all of this step myself.

At this point, I also went back to fix some of the hair, some of the shading outlines, and tweaked the colors a bit to make it seem more like a natural portrait.

Some very last things I did was change the opacity of the eye-shadow, add the eye "tattoo", darkened some of the neck shadings, and finally, I changed the background color to black. It was originally white. But once I saw it in black, I had to post it as-is.

Hope this inspires someone out there!

Best regards,
Trey