I usually start my painting with the face, but I would only advise doing so if you have experience behind you. I start on the face because almost always it's the hardest part and I like to get it out of the way. However if you are new to this process I would suggest saving the face for later or even last, so that you have time to acclimate yourself. In this step I'll be describing the face but Regardless of where you decide to begin your painting these following rules of thumb still apply, and my showing you the face will be helpful for when you do paint the face. Always start in an area where light and dark are close together (a high contrast area) to define the light and dark extremes in your painting. In this example I started on the left eye. Remember when I said to give yourself small goals? Well my first goal was to work in the eye area. All I have to do is get this eye right and I will not move on until it is. Painting in this fashion is far less daunting than trying to paint everything at once and it also helps you pay closer attention to detail, as you will come to discover for yourself. Ok, so lets jump right in, First define your light and dark extremes (10, and 1) Illustrated to the left. Next find your mid tones (6, 5). Now you have a range (light, dark, and mid tone) to compare everything else against. This is why we started in an area of high contrast. If you were to start in an area of just highlight or shadow once you finally got to an area of transition more often than not you would find that you were making everything too light or dark because your area of comparison was very limited. So now that you have your range, fill in the subsequent areas of value (1-10) with as many shapes as you can find, and remember do not neglect any of your 10 values. You did not mix 10 values so that you can use your favorite five of them; use them all because I assure you that they all exist in your figure and to neglect any of them is to do yourself a disservice for the subsequent steps.
 This picture is not the reference for the above painting, but it does illustrate a few points about painting eyes that I've seen many people struggle with. Look very closely at your source material and you will see the whites of the eyes should never be painted white, the same value as the highlight (value #10). This is a very common mistake and understandably so. The highlight in the eye is white, but compare that to the whites of the eyes and you will see that there is a difference, the highlight is always brighter than the whites of the eyes. This is important, because painting the whites of the eyes stark white and all the same value will make the whole face look off, and if you don't know to watch for this you may not discover why. This also brings up a very simple but commonly overlooked point. Eyes are round forms and should be painted as such; the whites of the eyes are not one flat value. As you can see in this picture the whites of the eye have a large variation in value, much like a sphere does. They don't call it an eyeball because it's flat, so make sure you don't paint it as such. Getting the eyes right is probably the most important thing to focus on, because everyone else will.
So now that we have the eye area roughed out what next?
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