I bit the bullet and tried to do faces again. Fortunately, Flickr explore for that day had this mesmerising long exposure photo where the same model is in three different parts of the photo, with a different expression in each:
And this is what I came up with:
I think at this point I’m still in the uncanny valley, but able to see the flatlands on the horizon.
Doing this involved paying attention to where the face was in shadow, and not trying to outline the whole face. It didn’t work perfectly, but I think I’ve got the basics right. I also paid a lot of attention to the shape of the eyes, and copying the small deviations from a regular ellipse that eyes actually are – and I think it’s worked.
Where I did get frustrated was the lower half of the face – it’s again one of those situations where I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong.
I think this was also the first drawing I did with a mix of 2H and HB.