Good work here. I agree that the proportions are off. When doing portraits you have to measure. The proportions will always be slightly off, it's impossible to be 100%. BUT they should be close enough. The shadows are definitely too light. I would suggest turning the picture black and white so you can compare values better. When youre good at that, you can work from colored pictures and then turn them black and white to analyze how you did. As far as general charcoal advice.. experiment and learn about the different kinds of charcoal to see what you like and what they do. Vine charcoal, compressed, powder, charcoal pencils. They're all tools and they all creat different marks. You can combine them or use them alone. Explore and best of luck to you!

You captured the likeness. Well done. But pay attention to your values. Your shadows are not dark enough. And values are not describing the shape. for exp: use values to show the roundness of the eyeball. Right side of the left eye must be in shade. And lips should be in darker values. Hope it helps. Good luck.

Hey W.I.M.U, Nice job on this portrait, you managed to capture his attitude pretty well. The thing about portraits is that if you are off a little here and a little there, it adds up and causes all kinds of problems. Usually in likeness. I think you got quite close, but you will notice in my diagram that some areas were off by just a bit. Also, shape design is very important, as well as angles. We have to make sure the shape and the negative shape all agree. Not just the shape of the eye, but the shape of the area around the eye. If our angles are off, then things wont line up properly and can mess up our proportions. All of what I said above is also true of the shadow shape and light shapes. I hope this helps :)