critique please

[erali the great]

I'm pretty new to realistic drawing. Dont mind the glue stain it wasnt my fault. Please critique

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f398/Erali/Picture1.jpg

[Seedling]

Okay. This is a good study. Some assorted thoughts. . .

Why a pencil? Graphite in the form of a tiny little point is best for making lines. It’s not a medium suited to finished pieces. If you do want this to be a finished piece, then you have to do something with all of that smudged space around the head.

The shadow on the left of the face gets a bit too graphic, and there are no glints in the eyes. A good rule-of-thumb for fully finished portraits is that the brightest part of the image should generally be that eye-glint.

Are you working from a photograph, and if so, why? Copying photographs isn’t a very good way to learn, and mirrors are cheap. This guy looks in particular like he might be from a magazine ad. If so, keep in mind that those photos are heavily touched up in Photoshop. But I don’t know, maybe this is actually a self-portrait, in which case you might want to try moonlighting as a model. ;-)

[nofingers]

I agree with seedling about the big gray area that is the far side of his face, although I think the graphite is a perfectly acceptable medium to render in. I think that eveything that's happening around his face is hurting the image, like how the hair turns into scribbles, or the sliver of black space on the side of his face, it doesnt help. With that frontish lighting, the eye highlight should be more noticable

After saying all that, the rendering of most of the face is looking really good, the subtle value changes in the cheek, forehead and nose are nice, a very good start