I’m ready to call this “finished.” Or, I should say, I’m at least ready to submit it to my teacher for comment. I’m happy with the portrait generally, but am not at all sure about the white conte highlights I added at the end. It was an experiment, and I’ll be very eager to get feedback on that in particular. I’d love to know what you think, too!
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It is a beautiful drawing. The eyes are exquisite and you have a really sensitive handling of the subject and an obvious attention to detail.
I’m not sure how big this is…I think you should step back from it and squint. If you do you will see that a lot of your tones are in the same range from the face to the clothing. To better get an idea of the tones print your photo reference in black and white and compare it to the color reference. Color temperature sometimes hinders our ability to properly determine the values of objects especially in photos.
You could afford to have some deeper darks to make some parts really jump out such as around the shadows, the brim of the hat (which is closest to the viewer, even the bridge of the nose. The eyes could really become a great focal point with more contrast. You have hard edges where soft edges would probably work better such as around the ears and portions of the outline of the face. The dark shadow by your neck made by the shirt cuff has a cut and paste feel to it so more tonal range in that area would visually alleviate that illusion.
The highlights work well on the clothes. You could even add them in other places such as the line down the middle and it would work. I think the highlights work well on the face but the ones on the forehead come off as forced and awkward. The middle part of your forehead is the section that is closest to the viewer and would catch the light in a manner similar to the way it is captured off of the nose. Now without seeing your reference this is purely an aesthetic observation. The highlight on the neck wasn’t really necessary and unfortunately creates a really hard edge that my eye visually connects to the shirt and makes them appear to be an amalgamation of the same element. In short, it looks like the shirt is growing out of the neck.
Sorry so long winded.