My attempt at the portrait today

Second pass with simplified shadow shape. This is kinda painful to look at. Looks clunky. Maybe there’s too much similarity between midtone and dark tone that distorts the reading of this. Tried squinting to really get the basic shadow shape but felt like I was cutting out a lot of the design and shape. Stan, how do you learn what to include and what not to include in the block shadow?

I think I went in on the detail waaaaaaaaayyyy too early. Need to SIMPLIFY shadow shapes much more. Was a good exercise learning to stick with just using five (four) values. Had fun.