Wow, I love it, it is totally awesome

That is really good - I look forward to seeing the finished result.

Very good, not as good as the close up. I could bullshit you with praise because I can see you can paint. When learning to draw I was taught that copying something perfectly never works, it needs errors to look right. First and only in my opinion the background should be a Smokey black or very light grey and not so flat, also it should move from light to dark normally with the face shading. This would make the hair stand out more. Even though the pose is probably correct to a photo, the point of balance is wrong this is what I call structure. I've looked at photo's of him and I can see he has a very long neck. So it tends to elongate the whole painting. Sorry if I’ve gone a bit to far, but I can see your very talented.