Photoshop Tutorial Gone Askew

I chose one of the PSDTUT tutorials - create a portrait from a photograph. Following the steps were easy. The effort of creating a detailed portrait using only a touch pad was a pandora's box of its own. I worked blood, sweat and tears into my portrait, yet somehow the resulting image bears striking similarity to Tina Turner if she went through the same surgical procedures as Michael Jackson. Needless to say, i was devastated with this result, unless I have unaware been living as a caucasian double of Tina Turner for the past twenty years. Focusing on words of advice i'd give to future makers of look-alike celebrity portraits: make sure you go very very close to the area you are working on. I made the mistake repeatedly of working too far back from the canvas, thus missing opportunities for necessary details. I would also suggest working with a photograph that has defined edges in the eyes, mouth, and nose. I found it difficult to work from the photograph I chose because firstly it was angled, and secondly it was not contrasted enough to allow me to see where to shade etc... Since this was my first time attempting the tutorial, it's likely that you might even need to have a similar experience to mine to get to the next point of being able to create a flawless tutorial image like the one PSDTUT made. I do think this tutorial was fun to work with, but it was time consuming, especially on the week when I have four upcoming midterms and a paper due along with the typical work that comes with the week. Next, I want to create the tutorial image PSDTUT - Create a Sleek Illustration that Fades from Line Art to Color: it'll be necessary to have sufficient time to work on it considering that it is 28 pages worth of instruction and probably about 5 or 6 hours of hard-working time in photoshop.