Portraiture is difficult!

My sketching class teacher has been helping us learn to do portraits. She starts out giving us all potatoes to draw so that we just focus on the "lumps and bumps". First we tone our paper with charcoal dust and a chamois. We then sketch our potato (or the shape of the person's head), and use our kneaded eraser to make soft white areas to show the lumps. She had given us the tips about where things go. For example, I never knew that the corners of the mouth are always even with the center of the eye, no matter what expression we make! Given all of this knowledge, my attempts still seem feeble, but it is fun to keep trying! Now, if only this call looked at all like Barbara (the person I was trying to render onto to my paper!), but it looks nothing like her, except for her hair perhaps!