Your help on this drawing, old photo I used a 2h and f for shading do you think I should go darker on it or shade the back ground to bring out the face ?

Try going over to the Dark Side !!

Not too much but some dark highlights would help define it just (my opinion)- I just do what I think - no formal training - I am sure thare others here who are better than me to tell you what to do & why, so I'll leave it them .

But great work so far.

Sue

I agree with Sue. I would try and balance the darkness that you have in the eyes and mouth to a few other areas of the drawing so as to tie it together - but thats just my opinion. I really like the hair

The eyes are great, but the face needs a little shading as it looks too pale for the eyes. More darks needed to balance it out, but otherwise it's looking really good so far.

This is a lovely portrait, but you do need to model the face more to give it life.

Give the whole area a pale 'wash' of graphite then add your deeper values on top of that. Nothing except the catchlights in the eyes would be the white of the paper. THere should be graphite on everything.

If you do a background it will also impact the values in your drawing, so make your decision about which way you want to go and choose your values according to that.

Thank you all for your input and nice words,it really helps me alot.

[bBobby]

Beautiful portrait.

I definitely think you need to do something to the back ground though to bring out the face. Even just making the background solid black with red undertones would be very nice.