Hoping I might get some constructive feedback on my drawing... I HATE drawing people and faces, so my 2010 personal challenge is too work on them.
Thanks in advance.

I noticed my scan have lost some of the lighter shading

This is a really nice drawing! I think you should follow through with your personal challenge, you'll be good at it.

A few things that I'll point out ...(I'm pretty much an armature though):

I would darken the shading inside his mouth to push it back a bit. This is the first thing my eye was drawn too.

Another thing I noticed was that his eyes and nose seem a bit larger than they should be. I did no measurements to confirm this, I'm just going by my eye.

The light reflection on the bowl under his hand is much thicker and brighter than it is in the photo. I think this interrupts the very nice shading you did on the bowl to make it look perfectly round.

lastly, I think your hands are really pretty good. the thumb may be just a tad think... but I really suck at hands so this is a really nice effort.

I'd agree with all the advice Forlindon has given, this all seems pretty solid to me. For someone who hates drawing people and faces, I think you have done a nice job here. If we are going to try to help you move it up a level, then my thoughts are as follows:

One thing I see very commonly is that people draw portraits where large areas of the flesh are white or near white. on a 0-10 greyscale (0=black, 10=white), the local colour for caucasian skin is typically a lot darker than that, about 6 or 7. (I do note your comment about the scan having bleached out some of the lighter shading)

If you knock the general skintone down, it means that you can reserve white for real highlights.

If you have a look at the foot demo David Kassan's recently posted here (David's one of the very best - I mean world-class - draughtsmen currently working) you will see how much he's pushed the general tonality of the skintones down:

http://www.drawspace.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79112

Note that this also means that it is possible to use pretty well all of the surface area to show form, by gradients of value - see how he builds tone by layered light "washes" of graphite, where stroke directions relate to the form.

It can be helpful to put down initial layers of tone in your darker areas and then slightly and lightly blend with a tissue to help establish some smoothness of tone - then building up further so that there's a little texture present without the excessive smoothness seen by blending or smudging at the end of drawing.


Dave