• Your drawing ability is extraordinary.
• The rendering of the lady's face is amazing. You definitely are a candidate for hyper realism!
• The skin color is very accurate.
• The lady looks relaxed and conveys a feeling of pride for her beauty.
• The hands are well expressed and accurately drawn.
• The chair offers a nice support that anchors the woman to the painting andthe furniture.
• Overall it is a wonderful piece of work!

Specific comments are below.

Realism is not all that makes a good painting. It is also important to have a main subject. The rest of the elements in your painting should be subordinate and subdued. I'm referring to the chair and the flowers. It was great to add these to your painting but it is important to keep them similar in value contrast so they don't shout for attention. Let's imagine for a moment a musical concert. The singer's voice predominates. The rest of the musical instruments will be quieter and will follow the singer's voice in the background. They won't be loud enough to overpower or distract.

The same would apply to your painting. The lady's face would be the main singer. The chair would be the violin. The flowers would be the rest of the instruments. When the value contrast (The transition form dark to bright and vice versa) is strong, it will pull your eyes towards that area, much like a noisy instrument playing too loud, interfering with the song. If the value contrast is subdued, then the area where the strongest shift from dark to bright will attract the viewer's eyes, where the artist intends, in this case, the lady's face and shoulders.

A second observation is that if you look carefully where the woman's skin meets the black dress, it seems to give the feeling that the skin area is floating or pasted on due to the fact that the black dress creates a "hole". (Perhaps the original painting differs from the photo.) Even though black is the darkest "color" and it absorbs a lot of light doesn't mean it can't have highlights as well. Had there been more light on the dress then this void feeling wouldn't be there.

My modifications:

I subdued the value contrast in the chair. Also take note that the flowers were also darkened putting them in shadow. This also helps give a three dimensional feeling because now they seem to be behind the woman.

After having done this, the face, neck, and shoulders even pop out more because now that section is the only area left with a light value, so I added some highlights to the dress to try to alleviate this. I still feel there should be a slower transition from light to dark where the dress meets the skin. A different color for the dress would have helped achieve this also.

Additional comments:

Congratulations! Well done!