thanks alphaflyte, i had a look at mikes alpha tutorial. It looks like it'll be a big help.

I have made a lot more progress on the mesh now. Mainly i did the head, taking a lot of care to keep it as smooth as possible without any ugly looking creases to keep her look as feminine as possible. Here is the head while it was still really early in progress. I painted over it in photoshop so i could get an idea what it might look like as im done (to see how much detail i still needed to add).