I liked the original face a bit more tbh 
Personally I think the hair shading/particle amount is dragging it down, not the face.
@horusscope Do you like this render? I plan on modeling a violin and having her play it in an animation to music. It will be easy since I play the violin.
This render was done with branched path tracing at 256 samples for all passes. It seems to be less grainy but it did take twice as long.
I just need to tidy up the hair and add more detail to the textures at this point.
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It’s better and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was so I went and googled “human hair” because there is something which suspends my belief about it. I figured it out, it’s the clumping. I can see every individual strand in your render and they aren’t sticking together. That’s all 
Edit: this image sparked my realization
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You took down the torso render? I thought that torso looked too thin. You should try modeling the torso on top of a female skeleton.
I did a rough sculpt to show what I mean:
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@horusscope I added clumping to the hair. It does look more natural. Its not like she’s wearing wool socks with 1000 volts of static electricity in her bangs.
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Does the skin shader look too waxy? Maybe I need to lower the Fresnel and use a sharpened specularity texture to show more glossy pore detail. By the way, the reason the Peak Memory is almost 8 gig is because I am using Hair BVH and Spatial Splits plus the HDR importance map is fat since the HDR map alone is 16K @ 2.45 GB uncompressed.
Since I am going for realism I did a bit of mesh tweaking.
The model is in much better proportions now.
Here is a screenshot of golden ratio geometry I plotted and followed.
Like I said. It is not a copy of an actual person. Its from math.
Hm, are you going for realism or for golden ration? Because the one surely isn’t the other…
With the golden ratio, the hips seem to be too wide, the waist too long edit: for realistic proportions. Additionally, something about her eyes doesn’t quite add up… I think it’s the outer eye corners to the lids. At least I can’t remember ever seeing somebody with so wide a distance between outer corner of the eye and corner of the eye lid. Looks odd to me.
bstabens
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Here are a few real life reference photos.
I personally think the wider IPD looks more appealing.
And as far as realism goes, the golden ratio is real.
Here is a quick measure I did on Brad Pitt.
No wonder he looks so good on screen.
But there are people of all shapes and sizes.
I guess what you mean’t was there aren’t any people that
are that “perfect”.
I guess I am going more for the art aspect rather than the “real” aspect.
For a reality to be knowable it has to have dimension. Dimension has measure and measurement
is all about comparisons of units to each other.
I guess it depends on what you define with your brain as “real” according to a “matrix of measure”.
The proportions here are really off here, the are just all over the place. This golden ratio stuff is bunk and it is causing you more problems than helping you but I have a feeling that you brought into this nonsense so much that you won’t step back from it.
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I guess there is a misunderstanding, as you are showing me pictures of a woman with a wide INNER eye corner. I was talking about the OUTER lid corner. The one to the temples.
Of course, you’re right about people being in all shapes (though I find it odd to talk about real people and use a picture of caricatures of people as argument 
) and of course there are people having features according to the Golden Ratio, but as far as I know it’s SOME people with SOME features.
And while Brad Pitt may be VERY close to it, if you look closely, there ARE some divergences in his face, which, while small, are in fact adding to his good looks (left eyebrow outer corner, inner corners of eyes, left ear a tad lower than right ear and so on). In fact, there were studies with symmetrized faces (simple mirroring) mixed into “real” faces where people had to judge these faces by attractiveness and the symmetrized faces, although otherwise expected, were judged artificial and uncanny and artificial.
So the thing I try to explain is there is a BIG difference between realistic, which is, most of the times, NOT perfect to the last dot, and perfection. These two are not the same, and you saying “I’m making a realistic, perfect person” is a paradox in itself. As I tried to hint at, when I try to look at your sculpt from a “Golden Ratio”-perspective I have to judge differently than when I judge the “reality” of it.
And from a realistic view I already told you things I would reconsider because to me, and JUST ME, they look off. But your mileage DOES vary, and when you tell me “no, I want somebody with a very wide hip nearly to the point of caricature” - then be it.
bstabens
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Okay, now from an "art"sy kind of point of view:
Her body really is stylized and exaggerated “female”, having the typical overgrown, gravity-defying boobs and the big booty with a very long torso. Her face is hard to judge because of all the lines obscuring it and in the lower pic the angle is not the best to judge her face.
To be honest, I had a look in your other thread to judge her face better, and she’s not my cup of tea. I’m very much not into these hairy eyes, they make me think of caterpillars, but you already said you’re not going to change them.
So concerning this as an expression of your preferences, I don’t share them, but to each their own, I guess.
But, as somebody who sucks at making textures, I find your skin texture admirable, and I like the hair.
bstabens
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I think a key takeaway here is that one should always use and study reference material for human anatomy. Using references is not shameful. In fact, at the highest levels of skill, it is respected to the point that boasting about not using any could be almost sacrilegious to some artists.
That doesn’t mean you need to find an image of a person and copy it. And really, you can get away with stretching and squashing proportions, and exaggerating features all you want to meet your ideal look and style (See the Hulk from the MCU). However, you have some potential growth in the basic skeletal and muscular forms. There are anatomical planes and landmarks that are missing throughout the model that are holding it back from reaching that next level.
And don’t get too caught up in that whole golden ratio business. It’s more of a parlor trick than anything (in regards to the whole “everything in nature follows the golden ratio” thing.) There are actually many ratios that can be approximated in nature (And they are ALL loosely approximated). The golden ratio can be pleasing to the eye, yes, and many artists like to work with it to be sure, but it’s not a rule to live and die by. Following it as a rule too rigidly with every aspect will only hold back your sense of expression.
So study up, and keep working at it. You’ll get there. We are all, always, students of the arts. I’ve been at it for nearly two decades digitally, and another before that with pencil and paper. I continue to study anatomy. I will always study anatomy. There is always some nuanced next level to learn.
EDIT: I think @yakuzakazuya’s thread here is a good example of what I’m trying to get across. He has what looks to be a pretty good foundational understanding of the forms, and is using a 3D skeletal reference in the scene as well as photo references. And yet he still continues to study, and remains open to all the feedback given. I love seeing that
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Lol, that famous golden number one see randomly popping on every ancient art. 
@cgCody said it so eloquently.
Copying and learning from actual models is the bedrock of classical western art. It is expected, not frowned upon. In the absence of live models then try to acquire photos of the human figure from as many angles as possible.
Anatomy is a lifelong learning process, the more you study actual people the more nuance you discover. It is amazing really.
Edit: sometimes you can find a 3D scan of actual people in Sketchfab. It’s another great tool for study.
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But you DO understand that great artists tweaked their depiction of their models toward achieving a certain degree of Golden Ratio as opposed to depicting a real, existing Golden Ratio? I do not say it’s bad to strive for a Golden Ratio, but you have to know how much and how far. And for this to know, you need a good basic knowledge of real proportions and a feeling for when you are pushing these proportions into the realm of Unreality and Uncannity. If words like this exist…
bstabens
i just see/say that you can any form above any picture and pretend it fits.
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Ah, I see. I misunderstood.
bstabens
I tried to do a paint over correcting the body shape (the neck area gave me some troubles):
The expert may correct the parts that I got wrong 
Here’s the full resolution (from yours original), by mistake, I move the canvas in the starting phase and I didn’t noticed, so it won’t line up 100% with yours, hope it helps.
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