Quickie Portrait 1

So I screwed that last acrylic self-portrait up pretty badly, and I thought I might need some practice. A while back I stumbled on this guy who did little acrylic portraits in his sketchbook using a large brush and very limited palette. Once I tracked the thread down I got some ideas on the palette he was using and did a couple trial runs of my own.

I'm having a lot of trouble controlling the huge brush and getting used to the palette so I guess I'm lucky this turned out as well as it did (which isn't very). But these take only about half an hour to paint so I can easily do a couple a day and improve. I might pick up a brush more similar to the other guy's. I don't know. Can one get more control with filberts or flats?