Ok, I'm not a supermodel! Once I got past that, I moved on to beginning my drawing exercise.

The first thing you need is a photo of yourself. I tried taking one in the mirror, but that didn't work so well. The next thing is to find someone that will take a descent picture of you. My wife happened to walking by so I asked her nicely to take a picture. She was very kind and took three to choose from.

The very first thing to do one you get your drawing pad, pencils and eraser all set up, is to sketch an outline of the picture.

Once you have that done you will want to start on one side or the other. Never draw all over the place, because you can smear the drawing and you might have to start over, that's no fun!

Once you have the outline that your happy with begin.

If you notice, I'm right handed and I always begin on the left side of my drawing. I like to get some of the shadows in place before I move to one of the eyes.

As I am drawing, I always keep comparing my pencil marks to what is actually on the reference photo. I use a kneaded or gummy eraser, it's my friend! The kneaded eraser isn't messy and it does a good job at lifting off the unwanted pencil marks.

I get one eye the way I like it and then I move to the nose. I like to do my drawings in sections before I get too far along. If you draw or shade too much of the drawing, it will make it difficult to compare to the reference photo.

Once you are happy with the nose, move to the mouth area. I have more than some people to draw, as I wear glasses and have a goatee. I thought about shaving before drawing this, but it was too much work. It was easier to just draw the whiskers!

Ok, no one said drawing whiskers was easy!

It's a good think I had my handy dandy eraser close by. It might take a few times to get a beard the way you like it. I have a little bit of gray on the one side and for some reason not on the other. So using the eraser it makes it easier to match it up. If you get it too dark, just tap the eraser on the drawing and it will lift up the pencil marks.

Keep working at it till you get it just right.

Now that I made it to the bottom of my face area, I decided to move over to the other side. I begin with my other eye and try to get it as close as I can. Be careful not to make it too dark. You can always go back later and darken it up if you need to.

Here I'm still working on the eye, glasses and moving on to the forehead. Then I moved down to the mouth and began penciling in my teeth. Hey, I'm pretty proud of those teeth. They cost about 1,500 bucks!

Drawing teeth can be tricky. If you make them too white, they look funny and if you make them too shaded they don't look right either. So take it slow and just add pencil where it is needed. I usually draw the top edges and lightly the bottom of the teeth. Once I get them sketched correctly I use my tortillion or blending stump to make some shadows or darker values in the teeth. If you notice it gets darker as the mouth rounds to the cheek areas. Darkening up this area gives your mouth a curved look and is more realistic. You can use your eraser on the lips to add high lights where the light reflects.

In this section I am just making a few adjustments and adding some shadows.

After spending a bunch of time on the mouth and beard, I moved to the other side of the face and began working on the ear and cheeks. I also moved down south to the neckline and shirt.

It's the difference in values that makes a drawing in my opinion. I shade pretty much the entire drawing. I just have to make sure I get the shadowed areas dark enough. My cheeks do funny things when I smile big. I get all these dimples and bulges in my face, so I want to make sure I get the shadows right.

Hair can be very difficult to draw. Some artist like to do individual strokes for the strands of hair. I don't think that looks very realistic so I just shade it all in and remove the pencil with my eraser where the high lights are, and I later add some individual pencil marks to make it look like hair,

Once you get the hair done, go back over the drawing and make corrections. In my final drawing I added some background just like in the picture to make it interesting.

If you would like to get a portrait of you or a family member just go to my website and drop me an email. Here's the link www.soulreflectionsbyjeff.com/