Untitled

I thing you're going on the right track. For reducing lines you could go two ways, shape filling or shape lining. The first consists of filling the whole shape until it's recognizable, the second one consists on drawing less lines, simplifying the shape until you can break down on a few lines.

Worry a bit less of details on the beginning and try breaking the face on easier shapes like, triangles, circles and squares. Once you recognize the patterns there, you'll find yourself finding them on each image you'll see.

Hope you have a nice time practising!

I think you've got a good structural base, but you need to make decisions about where the light is coming from. From there, you can add and eliminate lines as needed.

Well hello, Bookwyrmling, you wanna know what I think about your sketch? Do you want to know how I feel about it? Do you?

I think that, in judging by the drawing, you're right. Maybe it's suffering from the "too many lines" disease. So the cure for that is to start sketching some faces and expressions with 5 minutes of 30 second sketches. How I feel about your picture is that the idea is there, and the energy and vitality are all there, yet, it order for this face to work, you must be fast and confident with your lines.

I hope you'll find that helpful. Thank you so much.

Warm Regards,

PolyviosAnimations.

P.S.

Try doing 30 sec. scribbles of Andrew Loomis faces, please.

You have many of the proportions correct and that's great. That's not an easy thing to master. I like that you can really see the emotion. It's not wooden and has a lot of life to it.

I think you would benefit a lot from experimenting with Vine charcoal. The kinda squiggly style you have would work well in vine charcoal. But in pencil, you lose a lot of the flow you seem to be after. Give it a try. I think you'll enjoy it.