In the full painting, his head is not cropped at all, and there is more to his head and shoulders as well. I never crop my original paintings just in case I change my mind! LOL...Once I finish painting his wandblast in oils I will likely show a larger version of the whole piece. I find the small-ish aspect in which a piece is viewed online can compromise the impact of it. So, for that reason, I often crop it. In my FB cover version [link] you can see more of the background, which is actually a lunar eclipse in blood red tones.

I agree, this cannot be an overly original pose since it was obtained on the web and - apparently- used often? I could only find a small version of this pose, and I was searching for one where he looks directly at the viewer. It would have helped me alot if I could have found a photo with nice resolution to work from!

The original reason for doing this piece was actually as a traditional oil study for a totally digital painting....the digital painting has an entirely different background planned, as well as being a full length (whole body) version. It will be interesting to see the differences, and if I can capture the same nuances in his character through his features!
Thanks so much for the thoughtful critique, I appreciate you taking the time to consider it.