Vector Self Portrait

This is a vector self portrait I created using Adobe Illustrator as part of my foundation project. I have had this finished for a while but kept finding myself going back to it and making small changes, like improving colours and creating some kind of background. I have uploaded it here and tried to give some supporting text so I can finally leave it alone :)

Click the image to see full size.

I first took a photo and began tracing that with the pen tool for the basic line art. I intended to use the colour picker tool to quickly and easily colour the portrait, but the photo was pretty much a perfect example of how not to take a photograph (strong source of light behind me) so my whole face show up really dark, making colour picking impossible.
For this reason, a lot of my time was spent experimenting with different colours, trying to find realistic matches to my face, because after all, it is supposed to look like me.
Overall, I am happy with the end result, but feel I spent way too much time to actually get there.
I like to keep my works in progress very organised, which would explain why the illustrator file of this has 8 main layers, with easily over 100 sublayers/paths contained within them. It would also help to explain why this took as long as it did to finish!

I would say i'm something of a perfectionist. That's not in any way me saying I think i'm perfect, rather that once I have started something, I tend not to stop until I am completely satisfied with it, which can be both time consuming and frustrating... but it is rewarding :)