After the previous improvements to my celebrity drawings, I wasn’t sure what to work on for the next week before attempting my second self-portrait. The first day I was a bit burned out, so I made some FBR sketches to keep the streak going:

In thinking about what other skills I might need to acquire, I knew that since I hadn’t yet drawn any beards, I would want to either practice that or shave for the first time in years. I found a decent beard drawing tutorial on YouTube, but after about 20-30 minutes of sketching I realized how tedious it would be for something I wasn’t planning on finishing:

So I decided that the best way to practice drawing people was to draw more people. I started with a quick one-day sketch of Bradley Cooper, my first test of drawing some beard.

For my final pre-self portrait sketch, I wanted to bring everything together. So I picked a celebrity photo that had a similar beard length that was also turned slightly to add a degree of difficulty.

I spent the first two days sketching and erasing the outlines, unsatisfied with how well they matched the photo. In retrospect, I learned that I shouldn’t add any details to any particular component until I am fully satisfied with the placement and proportion of the features.

Even though I wasn’t totally satisfied, I began to work on details and shading to ensure that I was able to get through and learn from the practice while leaving enough time for my final self-portrait.

In the end, I’m reasonably satisfied. Each day, I spent 1-2 hours and I learned a lot in the process. The eyes should have been better placed initially, but I like the detail I was able to get in the ear and the hair is best I have yet drawn.

With four weeks of practice in the bag, there remained only my final test: the end of challenge version of my self portrait.