Jennifer Lawrence Portrait - Not a photo

Time: Long
Medium: Photoshop CS 5

I spent countless hours trying to finish this. Drawing people is a lot harder than still life. Cause still life you can play a little bit with sizes and people wont notice. If you mess up a face though... We are hardwired to analyze faces and differentiate one another with visual cues. I could not mess this up.

So here it is! I was inspired after reading "Hunger Games". I thought she would be interesting to draw. At first I wanted to make it in color, but seeing how beautiful it came out in black and white, I decided to keep it that way.

What do you think of digital photo-realistic portraits?
Personally, why waste time making something so close the photography when you can just grab the photo itself? Ok maybe on one hand, it shows I have the technical skills to do highly detailed and precise work and OK I -did- learn a thing or two about drawing a face in the process of making this.
But on the other hand, I can't help hearing that 8 year old again at a convention looking at my photorealistic images and saying to her mother "But she's just copying. That's not art".