New self-portait, early stages

I'm trying something new here.  As a reference, I'm using a photo taken of myself last year against a wall of red fabric and a single light source close by. The red in the backdrop seems to be reflected everywhere, affecting skin colour in the lights and darks. The challenge for me is see past that and use more natural colouring, at least in the lights. The traditional pattern follows something like this: cool (highlights, like the chin and left side of forehead), warm (normal skin colour), cool (half-tones, the areas moving into shadows) and warm (contained and cast shadows on the figure).  A traditional face is usually cool in the forehead (closer to the light source), warm in the cheeks (where the blood is), and cool again in the chin area (a result of less blood on the skin's surface and effects of stubble, etc.).  
Before I move on though I'm going to correct the basic drawing in the lower half, raising my right shoulder and moving my left arm in.

A look again at the Holbein master copy

I haven't worked on my Holbein copy since early October but plan to return to it soon. The image below shows its current state. On a visit to New York City in October, I returned to the Frick Collection where the original hangs on a dark wall.  I stared for a long time trying to see what the skin colour and values in the hands are supposed to be, but in the dim light it was hard to see for certain. Inside the gift shop, I was struck by how bad most of their prints were. I purchased a large poster that is about 95% to scale but like the many online versions of Thomas More I've seen, the printed colours are way off. What I did learn from studying it is that I still need to sculpt the chin and push it to the left while giving the underside of the nose a greater angle.  In short: I have to make him uglier.

Figure Painting Update

Here's a view of this figure painting from my previous class, November 23. I "wasted" two sessions moving the head further down a few millimeters to reduce the size of the neck. It was a good reminder of how important it is to get the overall proportions correct in the first drawing of the figure. White is not very opaque, especially the Crementz white I'm using for this picture. So two weeks ago after moving the head down, the old eyebrows and eyes were still showing through, giving the face a "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" look. I spent last week performing more surgery on the new head, masking over the old features again and remodelling the new eyes, nose and ears. Tonight, I have to go back in and reapply the right values so that she doesn't look like a ghost. The head is such a small area in relation to the rest of the canvas that it seems a shame to spend so much time on it.  The class winds down in a few weeks and I need to bring all other areas up to the same degree of "finish" as the breasts.