Remember the darkest part of the face is the eye location, then bottom of the nose-> upper lips->top of the chin

When I find something looks ‘off’ in my drawing, i hold it up to a mirror. Seeing it from a new perspective can make errors stand out. I use this as a way to check my proportions, placement, etc before i do any shading. Hope this helps!

Hey @stevenmc! - Fixing proportions: Having accurate proportions is a skill to develop, so don't be discouraged. You don't have to wait until shading to check, either. If you start out with the lay-in drawing, you can use a digital program like Photoshop (or its many other free alternatives like Photopea or Krita) to overlay your drawing over the original image, allowing you to instantly check the differences. Being able to check at this stage will allow you to both correct your mistakes and go through more practice drawings, which leads to developing this skill much more quickly. Here is a video that goes more in-depth both on measuring proportions and overlaying: https://www.proko.com/s/8B6Q - Shading control: Avoid blending or smudging as a method to shade, as this gives little control and often leaves things uneven and difficult to fix. Instead, try relying on layering tone evenly with pencil and using a range of pencil gradations (HB-6B is good to have if you have access to them). Practicing value scales can be helpful too--try out both smooth gradients and steps with even distances in tone between each square. Once you're able to control this, tackling complex subjects will come much easier. - Eye whites: Despite their literal color being so, eye whites do not often appear as pure white due to shadows from the surrounding environment. You're starting to add some shading to them, which is on the right track, but make sure to take into account how shadows from the environment will affect them. For example, in the first two images, the faces seem to be covered in shadow on the left side. This should cause the eyes on the left to also fall in shadow, making the eye whites darker than the eye whites in the area of light. - Perspective: The Loomis model is a method of breaking down the head into simpler parts that allows you map out the position of the head as a whole and place the features together. It also helps illustrate that the features should align in perspective, so if you were to mark the direction of the eyes, nose, and mouth individually, they should all end up facing the same direction in space. Here, there's a tendency to have the features all at slightly different angles, which can break the illusion of perspective and cohesiveness. But just utilizing guidelines, like from the Loomis model, can help fix this. Here is a video that explains how to go about this: https://www.proko.com/s/1cX2 Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions.