The First (of Many) Self-Portraits

To give you all a sense of what I look like, I'll start off with a few self-portraits that I've done!
I love drawing from life but sometimes it's hard to find people who are willing to model for extended periods of time, so I resort to drawing myself.
I prefer to draw from life instead of a photo.  Photos lose a sense of their three-dimensionality and drawing from something or someone in front of you is ideal.  Unfortunately, drawing your own profile is incredibly difficult so I resorted to taking a photo and drawing that.
This drawing did not take a lot of time.  It was no more than an hour and I definitely see mistakes that I've made on it (and some that I've fixed since scanning.)
The forehead is too rounded and the lips look flat.  They don't appear as though they extend to the other side of the head - which is definitely a problem!
This drawing was made entirely in ball-point pen (something I've recently taken a fancy to)
A good way to draw with pen is to utilize different hatching techniques and strokes.
As you can see, I used cross-hatching in the cheek bones.  This means that I went over in different directions in different places in order to give it more shading and depth.
The chin also has some hatching and cross-hatching.
A teacher of mine has taught me many valuable lessons - one of which being that we aren't barbies and our faces have dips and contours where hers did not.  We can't leave out under-eye bags and other aspects of our faces that give us character.