Long time no see.
Holy cow, I didn't know you went into graphite now! I know the feeling of hesitancy to post it but it's refreshing to show that not everyone is perfect.
With an untrained eye on graphite, I feel you need to determine which edge is hard or soft. But I understand that you are setting the value of the shade before blending in the next step unless I'm mistaken.
Keep at it! 
In light of my latest drawing blunder, I went back to construction and sketched some faces. After doing this, I realized that my construction skills had deteriorated (see below).
I also worked on some 2 min. gesture drawings
@mitsuki-youko Thanks for the insight on your shading techniques. I will soon attempt to render another portrait in Procreate and I will avoid smudging to see how it goes.
@snakker I will be more conscious of the direction I shade and how I depict the terminator (sharp vs smooth). I will also try to limit my range of values as you correctly pointed out that they are all over the place.
@Gordon003 Welcome back and thanks for dropping by. Your feedback reinforces snakker's point that I draw the terminator too sharp. I think what I will try to do is be less forceful in the shadow mapping stage and sharply define only cast shadows, not form shadows.
Nice, keep at it!
eyy these b lookin good so far! can't wait to see what you draw next 
I had another go at last week's portrait. I think I am getting the hang of how sharp vs. smooth the terminator should be. Contrast was also increased (I had to press hard on the paper lol. @snakker I will soon be getting some charcoal) I used a 2b and 4b for the shadow family and hb for the light family. A 6b was used for the hair to account for the darker local value. I need to still work on construction as there are still some perspective/anatomical oddities present in my drawing. To that end, I sketched two faces, inked them, and applied shadows where necessary. Side note: Hair is still a pain in the butt to draw AND shade.
@mitsuki-youko Either tomorrow or Friday I will digitally render this same portrait and see how it goes. I am still deliberating whether I should record myself or not (not sure how I will perform with the pressure of recording my screen).
I also did some 2 min gesture drawings (as per usual)
looking good so far!
I finally digitally rendered the portrait from last week and I think it turned out okay! I did end up smudging a little bit toward the end but I mostly focused on using a hard brush and pressure sensitivity like @mitsuki-youko's demo . Before this, however, I did practice my construction skills by drawing four portraits and somewhat shading them. Please let me know how they turned out in comparison to the references.
Looks really good!
