Q1 Home Project Progress (#1)

My goal for this project is to have some kind of self portrait to put in my supplemental portfolio for colleges! Right now I have a bright red underpainting down and some of the background. I was hoping that having such a saturated underpainting would help bring life into the face later and that in the meantime the underpainting would serve as a good midpoint for my colors, but it's actually throwing off my color picking a lot because it's too saturated. I think my strategy going forward will be to put down literally any color, even if it's not quite right, until I have a more neutral background to reference off of and then I can refine it more.

This is my progress so far! I don't know if it's very visible in this picture, but I do have a sketch under here and it took me forever!