After getting a little more reference and making a few more sketches of what I wanted the gondolier’s face to look like – I finally reached a basemesh I’m fairly happy with.  Looks a little more Italian, looks a little more stylized, and looks more interesting.  I’m now batting around the idea of having him in a singing pose for the final image… so we’ll see how that goes. 
(Lesson learned:  Don’t model without some sort of concept sketch or reference to help get the idea out of your head first.)

I’m gonna be taking a few days off to go for a snowboarding trip, so no updates for the next couple of days.