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Very nice start! biggrin

A few suggestions. First, don't use just lines to define the eye. Meaning use shading instead. The eye is not made up of lines, it has curves and dips. The eyeball itself could use some shading due to the fact that the eyelids/ eyelashes create a shadow. Also the iris and pupil are usually very round and quite a bit smaller. I suggest you study the eye closely, there is more to it than most people think at first. Here is something that might help. It's helped me a lot anyway, seeing the steps.

The nose also does not need lines all the way around it, mostly it's just shading. Also it looks a little small.

The mouth itself is also not just a line it curves as well. Pay attention to that.

Finally be sure that when the head is tilting, that the facial feature are properly aligned with the position of the head.

So far very nice work. I like the hair very much too.

xd

well i'll start with the last drawing 1st.

if you're gonna go with flipout's advice, go all the way with it. don;t just do nose and eyes. in the words of Leonardo Di Vinci we are not made up of lines but of light and shadows.
i can tell you are having a hard time with making thins look volumetric. this is one of the hardest things to do. the best way to go about it is to stop using shapes (squares and circles) but start using forms(spheres and cubes). this might also help with the semi lopsided top of the head and jaw you kinda have.
your proportions are also slightly off. the head is typically 5 eyes wide and a little under 7 eyes high. once you get a feel for that you will also understand where the nose and mouth fit.
in your last rendering you went overboard with the shading. try to understand the gradation of shadow to light. the face is particularly hard mostly because of the very subtle plane changes and the fact that there are quite a few of them. another way you could go about it is to print out the pic and grid both the pic and your paper.9that is actually the way they 1st teach it at my school).

overall you pics are pretty good and i understand in your anime ones that you're going for a very stylized look. but my suggestion is that since you don;t quite get proportions and anatomy just yet is to stay way form that until you get good enough to bend those rules. and i know that you wanna draw like that right off the bat but those artists had to put in their "dues" sort to speak and learn the "proper" way of drawing stuff.and lastly i forgot who mentioned the proportions for height but you should keep in mind the proportions for width. they are about 2 3/4 to 3 1/3 heads wide for females and males( females being slimmer of course).

well i hope that helps some and if anything is unclear or you have any questions let me know

well the difference between using the grid and not using the grid is that without it its up to you to place and proportionate the subject to background/negative space. and to be totally honest i'm not a fan of the grid in general let alone as as teaching tool. the leap between is too great in my opinion but the ideal is to show you how things kinda are spaced out not just for you to follow blindly. i mean you could but you won't learn much that way.

and yea gray scaling the pic would work. but once again you won't learn much. it takes time to train your eye to see it the way you wanna see it. kinda like how you need to train your hand to draw what you see in your minds eye(sorta speak) like black and white all the colors are gradated and once you start to think in those terms it'll be easier.

you might want to consider using charcoal on newsprint charcoal is a better medium for making the sfumato( the hazy soft shadowy look)

*edit* let me recommend a good anatomy for the artist type book. pretty much anything by George Bridgman. i just bought his complete guide to drawing from life used for 2 dollars + SH. i have all of his books and they are fairly cheap to get new and even cheaper used. i keep all his books right by my computer and reference them daily so they're worth the money (also i think amazon is doing a buy 3 get the 4th for free thing atm so its even cheaper.)