Basically, a look at how I've been doing with my portrait skills in the last two months. =)


Edward Norton: May 29th



Robocop: June 9th



Virgil: June 12th



HP Lovecraft: June 17th



Zooey Deschanel: June 18th



Mitch Hedberg: June 18th



Ian MacKaye: June 19th



Hugh Laurie: July 7th (the only tablet drawing of them all)



A Terrible Picture: July 14th



Christopher Walken: July 15th (needs more cowbell)



Taras Shevchenko: July 17th



Bruce Campbell: I ##### up because Bruce Campbell is too awesome for me to try to draw: July 20th



Theodore Roosevelt: July 22nd (as a friend put it: he looks like an egg, with a face and glasses, but still an egg)



Sain from Fire Emblem: July 24th



Carl Jung and Gary Cooper: July 28th



Sigmund Freud: July 30th

For the few that I do recognize, I must admit they definitely resemble who they're based on. Overall, pretty good work. Freud especially earns you bonus points simply for using pen, but with how it came out, that's even better.

Suggestions:
1.) You seem to have picked up on this a bit already, but try laying off bold outlines a bit, where they're not needed. (Like the edges of people's faces, for example.) This took me a while to get used to, but when you start remembering to do it, things generally turn out looking much more appealing.
2.) Try being a little more patient with shading. ^^; Or, at least, use the side of the pencil more than the tip. When you use the tip for shading, especially stuff like skin, you get results like Bruce Campbell's forehead there. (The "squiggly" going down the middle of it, I mean, from overlapping lines.) Using the side more will help smooth things out a bit.
2b.) On the other hand, if you'd rather stick to the tip, try to do your shading in a more organized manner. What I mean by that, basically, is you should keep the number of angles minimal. Either keep all of your strokes at one angle, or just two or three. Look into "hatching" and "cross-hatching," to see what I mean.

Those two things aside, the overall results of these are good. Just try to pay more attention to things like I mentioned above, as well as proportions of things.

Can really see improvment over the months!
keep at it!

Sigmund Freud and Taras Shevchenko are the best of your drawings no doubt!

I think you have a nice sketchy style. Some of the things you had drawn look pretty neat. Keep up the work.