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I'm afraid I can offer nothing constructive about the water colour aspects per se, for it is a medium that has remained, as to me, coy and aloof, easily resisting even my most ardent advances. More successful courtiers will have to speak to this element.
I do understand the learning curve involved in capturing and transmitting acceptable digital images via the myriad platforms and protocols and formats. (Note the glaring dearth of images I've posted on SOG.) I was hugging the heights of that curve but lost my footing and am presently lying face up at its base, looking for shapes in the clouds and considering career options while tattered pages of computer manuals continue to descend upon me. You will surely think I am exaggerating.
I do think you've done really quite well with a challenging subject and situation. Many presumptions about placement and proportions of features are of little use when considering the likeness of an aged or infirm subject; the flesh and underlying musculature begin to defy our textbook expectations. There's nothing about the rendering that suggests that you have not accurately captured the features and likeness of this subject. In a piece in which the values are high throughout, you have nonetheless wisely and adeptly portrayed a lighted and a shadow side of the subject. It's a bit difficult to detect in the reproduction, but it appears that there are good transitional halftones between the lights and darks. Two small suggestions in that area: there's a small triangle of light in the shadow (on the viewer's left) on the jaw line right below the corner of the mouth, which seems too bright for its position and, in any event, is diluting or breaking up the effect of that large useful shadow shape on that side of the face -- I would tone that triangle way down; and secondly, the edges at the base of that triangle and at the base of the chin are extremely sharp (due, I suspect, to the photo reference), and even if the subject's features in those areas are particularly prominent and hard-edged, there nonetheless must be some turning of the form underneath at those sites, where the plane of the form turns away from the light and becomes darker in value. I think that if you squint down you will see both the effect of softening those edges, as well as the interference caused by that triangle of light.
You suggest that the photography unduly accentuated the red hues beneath one eye. I occasionally like to snap a photo or two of a work in progress, just to see what the camera sees. (I should note that this practice will infuriate some purists, and might most profitably be done during their lunchbreak absences.) Once in a while I find the "second opinion" quite useful. You might revisit such areas in the future and see if the photo image is "on" to something that you might have missed. You needn't reveal your methodology to anyone.
I had an impulse to suggest a darker background in a different hue, but I haven't sold myself on it yet. Perhaps it's okay that the white hair is somewhat "lost" against the background, and that the overall brightness of the piece serves perhaps as a counterweight to the emotional pull of the frailty and circumstance of the subject. Still . . . the abundance of that same tone and hue of blue does make me wish that the blouse, or at least the chain-link design along the jacket edges, were a different color.
Lastly, I guess I would have to recommend that you not try to "weave" your signature into the work, especially when, as here, it does somewhat compromise an edge. (I do, however, think that the edges on the shoulders should be softened.) And anyway, your signature on a portrait is part of the composition of a portrait, an announcement of professionalism and "ownership" of the work, by which you say "I am an artist and this is something created by me." Also -- you wouldn't want a prospective client to pore over the portrait and not be able to figure out who painted it!
More rambling than useful, but a place to start.
Best wishes,
Steven
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