I thought I'd share my progress of the HUMAN course so far by @theluthier . I worked on it mainly on the weekends and before work, after work and in between work, whenever I found the time, basically. So now I'm pretty exhausted and will probably take a little break before I tackle clothing, texture painting, materials etc etc. But I can say without a doubt that this course is amazing, I still can't quite believe I actually made that. Thank you for putting so much work into this course!
Your skin shader is taking shape! Maybe too early to tell at this point but my gut tells me the utility maps are a touch too strong. Ultimately you want SSS + geometry doing most of the work with some subtle assistance from the util maps.
But I only say that as something to keep in the back of your mind as you continue developing.
Thank you and I agree. It's all a bit too strong at the moment for my personal taste, but like you said several times, better make it too big and too strong at first, you can always dial it down. Once I've got hair, better lighting etc I'll try to make everything match
I'm sharing this to remind myself that this is all sorts of wrong, haha. It can only get better from here. I went a little overboard with the eyebrows and my tweaks on the skin shader also just don't look right anymore. But I'm trying to archive these "fails" as well, you can only grow from them. 
Another day, another edit. I've tweaked the eyebrow shape, but I'm still not happy with it. They look fake, like a wig. An eyebrow wig. And it's not just the material, it's also the placement. I've revisted my skin_color texture paint. Also not happy with it, haha, but I'm having fun experimenting a bit at this stage. I definitely think that in the end I won't be striving for a hyper realistic portrait, but more for a mix. We'll see how it'll develop. I'm a little afraid of advancing to the beard and hair stage, after my not so great job on the eyebrows so far. 
Some progress on my HUMAN. Played around a lot, experimenting. This is a lazy first attempt at a beard, definitely gonna groom it more, but I really like where this is going. 
