Further practice with colored pencil, more burnishing/layered effects. This is actually the dude in my avatar. Details don't show as much as I'd like.

This was done quickly, and wish I could have added more detail. This is oil pastel and charcoal, and a teensy bit of colored pencil. This piece is actually 18x24.


Inspired by my snake. Love me some oil pastels n' turpentine. Also 18x24.

You've seen my posts before, you know the drill (important parts italicized so they stick out; bold is for a new topic; urls of relevant/humorous pictures and examples; I'm not attacking you, just pointing out what I see, so don't get your panties in a knot ;) ).

Anatomy
THIS IS THE BEST ANATOMY TUTORIAL I'VE SEEN IN A WHILE SERIOUSLY READ IT

Most of it seems to have decent proportions; the top of the head seems a *bit* flat, or cut off where his hair is - like you ran out of room on the page or he happens to have a partly crushed skull (for his sake, I hope the former and not the latter). The eye on the left seems a bit stretched. The right eye is at an odd angle on the guy's face; I know his head is supposed to be turned slightly, but that shouldn't cause such a skew. The right side of his jaw also seems a little sharp and angled compared to the left; yes, perspective, I know; however, based on the shape you've given his head, it still shouldn't be that pointed. Also, try to remember that your jaw is in fact connected to your neck. There shouldn't be a hard line right across to his ear - a hard shadow is fine, but not a hard line like that. Other than that, you have a good sense of what goes where - thank goodness no feet where ears should be or hands sticking out of shoulders :p

If you want, try messing around with it using the liquify tool in PS to experiment without having to redraw the whole thing and erase tons of stuff.

Have another tutorial as well (with links to the parts of the tutorial in the description).

Shading/Lighting
HERE'S SOME REFERENCES and HERE ARE SOME MORE and finally HERE'S A TUTORIAL TOO

I have no idea where your source of light is coming from. Seriously, fix that! Based on the minimal shading you do have, could be coming from the left, but then there's the large shaded patch on his left shoulder and cheek - so maybe from the front, but his cheeks are shaded, so that wouldn't make sense. It's not from the right, since the right side of his neck is completely shaded in, and so is the right side of his nose. Pick an angle and stick with it - draw in a little light on the page if that helps you remember, but don't go shading places for convenience - that's as bad as billboards from two different directions in a map.

Other than that, your shading needs a lot more detail - like a lot a lot (and no, it's not my monitor; I opened your pic in photoshop and tried ramping up the contrast, messing with the curves - everything). Textures would be nice (shading is all part of that) and attention to the shape of the face would help a lot with the directional lighting dilemma.

Here's an advanced shading tutorial too.

For editing drawings in Photoshop

Alright, this has dragged on for long enough. I didn't touch on composition because I'm pretty sure you have some grasp of composition and there are plenty of tutorials out there.

My favourite because pandas are adorable.

I got lazy on the left half of this one >.> but I love the eyes...