Painting in Progress: Flipping the Bird again

After drinking a RedBull at 7 PM, I ended up on an insane painting journey (very fitting choice of words especially with the subject matter!) with this painting. Many other artists know that there's a stretch during the process of a painting where you hate what you're working on... it's in the middle stage where it you know it's going to take a lot more work to even be mildly close to decent... and it feels so far away.

That's how I felt about the people in this painting. The challenge was to make these people look realistic with just a fuzzy old photo taken while driving to reference. So at 4 AM, I stepped back and realized I had made it over the major hurdle. The colors were all pretty much spot on.

The one area that I knew I was going to have to call in back-ups for was... the dude's face. I am not good with faces. They end up looking cartoony, and I can only imagine what it would look like WITHOUT any information to base it on!!! The ladies face will be covered by the border so I don't care about her.

THIS is what I have to work with:

What am I supposed to do with that?!?! I can't just leave it as some amorphous thing!. So I am enlisting one of my drawing instructors at the academy... and luring him over with the promise of something edible for dinner tonight, in order to figure out how to put a face on this due without it looking stupid.