Maybe I should change my painting process

Maybe if I paint in this process, I can acheive the realistic look I'm striving for. However, I think the colors are going to be the tricky part, I will definately need to blend better, but I have no idea how to do this, and can not even get the colors that are in this painting AT ALL. I don't know HOW this person did the colors, but I defiately need to try to imitate it, otherwise my portraits will never improve! HEEEEELLLPPPP!!!

My father's portrait

This was really my first time painting a man. I never realize how much diffrent it is to paint a man than a woman. When I first started, I made him look so feminme, he look like a transgender. And since I don't have a transgender as a father (definately not) I had to work on his eyes considerably more and make his eyebrows thicker, to make him more masculine. However, I did like trying something new. And plan on improving to make them look more realsitic.

My mother's portrait

I definitely added more blending to the face this time. I was trying to make it more realistic than the last portrait. With this portrait you can see the brushstrokes-I'm still not sure if that's what I wanted, but it allowed the painting have more depth. The hair, again, gave me the run for my money, it was so much harder to create individual strands of hair than I had thought. However, it is a definite improvement.

Finally finished my grandmother's portrait

This portrait was extremely hard for me to get the right tone. She had such fair skin that the color started to look like the color white, right from the tube. However, about midway I started to make the skin tone darker with shades of brown in it, which brought her face out from the "blendings" of a wall.
*I will definitely have to work on the hair next time, make it more individual than collective.