Visually clearer Paul --- but now I miss that nicely rendered tree! 

An artist's job is never done. :)

@Joe: Jolly good!

Fooling around with profiles, silly hats, and reckless application of digital grey-wash...

And a Ghoul

And one more, attempting to be (a bit too?) dramatic

Sketching a lot --- I must be procrastinating doing something else. This one was of a bust by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse called Bust of a Girl.  I did not do it justice. See for yourself.

Here's one on the left of an elvish lady that I sketched about 6 months ago while waiting for my daughter's car to get serviced at a dealership.

It always bugged me when I flipped through my sketchbook that the proportions were so off, so the other day I finally attacked it with an eraser.  After numerous attempts to fix it, I was defeated.   Graphite was everywhere!

This morning I went after it again with an ink-pen and finally got something I could live with, and then photographed it and made some more digital adjustments.  Symmetry, feature placement, size, alignment --- so important on a face!  The drawing the nose by itself can feel like climbing Rushmore.  I read somewhere that every drawing goes through a P.O.S. stage, and you just learn to push through it.

When I was all done, I had totally humanized the elf! Making things "look right" to my eye also meant removing the exotic.  Ironic.

Just thought I'd share this little piece of my learning process.

(The hair is still a hot mess...but whatcha gonna do?)