EVE New Citizens Q&A

Yes

You see when you make a character and take a new picture the server takes the data regarding the position, clothing, and lighting of your character and then re-renders it server side at maxed out settings. This is to ensure that we don't have any unfairness in regards to the quality of people's pictures. We don't want the people with olderer comps missing out on having a nice picture.

The server render generally takes a few hours and you can tell when it's done by checking EVEGate/forums. In game however the client uses a cache of images that isn't updated all that often. The client probably won't pick up the new picture for at least a few days but you can force it to update by deleting the old picture your char has in the cache files.

The problem with this is that...
A) Since you have the default blank pic I don't think you'll be able to delete it for a forced update, this method would be for someone that recustomized their character.
B) This method only works for YOUR client and everyone else in EVE that hasn't had their cache update yet still won't see your new picture. So even if you do a forced update don;t do asking around how you look with your new hair...people still won't see it yet. (Unless you link them to your pic on the image server.

(You can get standard square sizes of pics up to 1024x1024 by viewing you EVEGate profile, clicking the (+) on your pic, and then changing the URL to the size you want i.e. 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024)