Realistic Portrait practice

I painted it in gray-scale, then did colors over top. That made the basic shading end so much earlier! Then I continued to paint on top of the color and experimented with textures. I created a custom freckle brush for her. I just put her photo next to my canvas so I could really look. I am working on stopping the lazy no-looky-itus and really made sure it looked like the photo.

10 hr total with color. Photoshop CS3, Intuos 3 Wacom Tablet.
I do not own the character, this is practice and not for sale