portraits

[GirafeEnFeu]

http://img12.photobucket.com/albums/v31/GirafeEnFeu/gramma.jpg

http://img12.photobucket.com/albums/v31/GirafeEnFeu/gramma_001.jpg

C&C very welcome!

[Oblio]

Nice.
The form doesn't read too well.
First portrait - the cigar looks flat, his left eye also (should be round and all).
So.. be sure you nail well the form before going to values.
Apart from that... cool effort. :chug:

[Setherial]

Not to bad but I would advice you to drop the smudging technique, I did it for a while too but in the end it's just not a very nice technique (unless you're using charcoal).
Experiment with (cross)hatching instead.

Second remark I would make is that you're too cautious, all the lines are soft and have equal width (if any at all). Experiment with line width.
Maybe buy a nice fat 3 mm pencil just to experiment with thick lines.

3th remark, draw values instead of shapes, I can clearly see that you draw the eyes, the mouth, the nose and then a face around it all, all as seperate entities because these are the things you know. Instead forget what you know and draw what you see, = light values. (damn I sound like my art teacher)
Draw on a seperate sheet of paper 3 to five empty boxes. leave the first box white (empty), and make the last box black (darkest fill), all boxes inbetween should be graduations between these two extreems. Now once you start drawing choose the middle value. Everything that is darker you choose a value from the boxes to the right, everything that is lighter take a box more to the left. Never use values other then the 3 to 5 values in those boxes. You'll see that your drawing will imporve a lot.

As a last hint I would say go check out the fredflickstone tutorials on this very site, they are fantastic.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14119

hope I helped :p

Seth