[Helm]

Hello. I like your drawing.

Here's a few points:

Your pencil rendering is a bit uneven. I think it has to do with the pencil strokes. I agree that some rough scetching always will show, but I think it would be to your benefit to maintain some sort of consistent flow in the direction of your strokes as you shade. The discussion about how the strokes portray the qualities of light, and volume is a big one and I'm not sure it really applies. The main problem is the messy rendering in the hair. In other places it's ok.

Did you work from general to specific? I mean, did you add detail evenly, or did you draw the basic shape and then go "right, I'm going to work on the left eye until it's done!"? Since there's an uneven amount of detail and shading in places I'm guessing the latter? I'm also guessing this because when someone has such strong reference as a photo, he doesn't care about making strange lighting consistency errors early when detailing, because he can verify just by looking at the photo. Anyhow, the way you did the lips and eyes is great but the shading in and under the nose area seems lacking. The eyebrows could be worked more.

Take note, I did not look at the original photo to see how this relates to that, because it doesn't seem to me that your drawing was about capturing reality in such a way that complaining about the glasses being a bit too big or whatever would be valid. The main reason I think there's a stylistic quality in this piece is the lack of tone and shading in large areas. This either suggests a realistic situation with much and harsh ambient lighting (think bright white flourescent) or that there is an attempt at limiting the amount of shading intentionally to go for a more artistic approach. Either way, I'm not too keen. I'd like to see different areas with different levels of brightness, like where the hair meets the neck, I'd cast a shadow from an abstract upwards point of light. I'd make that the darkest bit of the picture and it wouldn't matter too much if in the photo it isn't like that, it would just make the picture more interesting to look.

Generally, shadows.