I didn't do anything to the image of the woman in the final image.  I did decide to add a fantasy forest type background.  I added a diffuse glow to the background to give it a bit of a cool color glow, then i added a Gaussian blur to give it that hazy look.

Below is the first attempt at an avatar and sketch. The initial photo seems to have had some digital altering done to it already.  I think that made it a little bit more difficult on me as far as getting the highlights and shadows to work correctly with the avatar.  It took quite a bit of dodging and burning to get the photo where it is.

 work cited

Reed, Kevin M. KEVIN MICHAEL REED. Digital image. KEVIN MICHAEL REED. KEVIN MICHAEL REED, n.d. Web. 31 July 2014.

Dodson, Nathanial. AVATAR MASK. Digital image. Tuvid.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 July 2014.
Pickyme. Fantasy Background 6. Digital image. Deviantart. Deviantart, 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.