Progress

I'm trying a different method of painting it other than the one we learned from the eye tutorial. Its a black and white to color technique I learned from watching many different tutorials on youtube. I'll post some of my experimentations later. for now this is what i got.

progress

Reference Images (Ideas)

Here are just some ideas as far as what I want to do for poses for my illustration. There's still more I want to do. for instance i dont like the lenght of the hair so i'm going to change that in a nother reference pic.

images

I wanted to do more of an 'environmental' portrait.. hence the reason he's at caribou coffee in the picture.
I'm posting 5 for feedback on which one you think will work best.
Also, is it okay to stay pretty true to the background?

Photoshop eye Painting