Critique my drawing skills, Southperry

I can't help with traditional mediums, but I can try to critique at least~! Straight-on views like this are particularly difficult as you're working with something that's fairly flat.

First, look at the shape of her skull. Think of how the skull has two parts: the cranium and the mandible. The cranium is taller than it is wider, but not by much ― somewhere in the ballpark of 1 width = 1.25 height. The jawline is fairly angular, whereas you smoothened it quite a bit in your drawing.

When you're breaking down a face, you can divide it into three sections. iirc, they're around:

1. Hairline to brow bone.
   
2. Brow bone to bottom of nose.
   
3. Bottom of nose to bottom of chin.

For your girlfriend, notice how her forehead has the largest ratio in both images. 2 and 3 seem to switch depending on which picture I look at, but you're able to get the best references for this.

When you're drawing and have references, I hope you keep the reference with you as you draw. It really helps.

Anyhoo~

• You've made her face oval shaped with softened edges. The jawline in particular is very off this way. Notice how angled the reference photos are from your drawings.
  
• Her forehead is much larger than what you've made it out to be.
  
• If you were trying to imitate the same hairstyle as the reference photo, you're a little ways off. I'll comment on this later if that's what you were aiming for.
  
• The size of her eye is about the same size as her nose/nostrils area.
  
• Her eyes are also wider apart, maybe 1.25-ish width of an eye from each other.
  
• For the nose, notice how the bridge dips down and then pops out where it meets the nostrils.
  
• When you smile, there's a muscle that pulls up the corner of your lips. How much these corners are pulled affects the cheeks.
  
• There's another couple of muscles that help pull the lower lip down, which affect the appears of the lower jaw area.
  
• For more specific how2do for the facial features, this guy has pretty nice tutorials.

I think the biggest thing you need to think about is shape and structure. Once you get form down, it'll be easier to understand future things like lighting.

Okay, from now on I will keep structure in mind (and start out with drawing the 3 seperate parts of the face?). I do keep my references by me, but they were on my phone which isn't really.. the most optimal place to have them. For traditional drawings, would it be best if I looked at a computer image?
I will harden out the chin, I knew something was up, but now I do see the differences in how I drew it and the references. I think the forehead is larger because I put the eyes too high? I did notice they are closer than they should be. I used the reference hairs roughly, but changed it up to fit how easily I could draw it and to cover up part of the jaw (which is what I thought was wrong with the jaw until now I see it is the chin).
Yeah, I guess I just need to look up and really study the shape of a face before I try any more of this, because there is a lot I have done wrong here. A lot of it I can't change because it would take starting the whole thing over :x but I will do as much as I can and save this page/the one you sent me so I can try to better what I'm doing in the future.

I recommend getting a good photo of her straight on without her tilting her head or anything. Start out drawing light, draw a basic idea of the face, outlining it by the hairline. From there, work picking out key features and placing them in the correct positions on the face, such as the eyes, nose and mouth. From there, work on shading to make the face more 3 dimensional.

Yeah, I think the thing that hurt me the most (besides obviously having no idea what I'm doing) was the picture I chose to reference.

The shading on her teeth makes it look like gaps rather than the gum line.

Remember when you smile your gums are an upside down triangle only at the top (since in general, flash photography hides the spacing between each individual teeth).

So only very lightly draw in spacing past the gum line.

I will change that asap.

Thanks everyone for the help!