Realism Attempt

Lastnight i was working on this painting. I started by making a drawing with some Derwent water colour pencils. I looked at a photo i'd taken of a friend as the basis for the drawing. I was reasonably happy with the drawing. Then i used a big ol' mob brush to wet the drawing and intended to use cellafilm wrap to add texture. But the probably too wet mop brush erased almost the whole drawing. All the lines diffused and dispersed on the wet paper. So i had to draw it again after the paper dried. I tried using a smaller wet brush to again make it look more like a painting than a pencil crayon drawing. Again it diffused too much, even though i used a significantly drier and smaller brush. So i tried applying the Derwent water colour pencils to the wet paper and it left larger more permanent markings that didn't diffuse with brushwork. These are the markings that are visable now. The whole thing wasn't as pleasing as my original drawing, so i was quite disappointed. It was bed time, so i thought WTF i might as well try something else, so i used the big brush and some dark blue and black paint and applied broad strokes around the eyes, nose and mouth. It didn't look too bad. When i looked at it this morning, i was really pleased with it. It doesn't look close enough to my original photo of my friend to be recognizable though, so in that respect i'm pretty disappointed, even though i'm quite happy with the colour and styling. I photoshopped a picture of the painting and enlarged the eyes, nose and mouth and that looks a little more like the friend. But the original painting is finished the way it is.