Tonight I drew this very handsome man holding up his hand in "Stop!" position, from a reference photo of this model.

Here's my sketch:

At first, the shading on his face was VERY prominent, looked like warpaint rather than shadows, so I went over it gently with an eraser thinking I would redraw them more gently afterward. As it turned out, just the gentle erasing softened the shading pretty well. 

I've been having fun adding color to the backgrounds lately, rather than trying to go over the figure itself with colored pencils. When I color the faces, it often ends up looking more cartoony than I want, but coloring the background seems to make it pop in a way I'm really liking at the moment.

I also initially drew his face much too long, and had to erase and redraw his entire lower face about a quarter inch higher. 

In the "finished" (I should really go back and do more work on pretty much everything I draw and post here, but this one is finished at least for now) version, I am super excited about the face shaping. That's something I have been struggling with: trying to get the planes of the face to look like they aren't all facing directly at the camera, but instead are at different angles. I've historically had especial trouble with that on foreheads, and while this one could be subtler, I am very pleased with the progress it represents.

Thanks for coming to see my pictures :D