Quick Sharpie sketch of the cover of Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis. Whenever I'm having trouble grokking something, I usually do best if I go back to the beginning and review my fundamentals, so I searched through my collection of drawing books and started with this one. I like Loomis's work: while it is old school, he draws well and communicates well about how to draw. In this case, I'm going to try to methodically go through the book, as I started to a while back with his Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, which is perhaps my second favorite art book after Wizard's How to Draw: Getting Started.
In this case, I haven't even cracked open the book, or even tried roughs: to free up some time to chill on my Saturday night, I just started with a quick Sharpie sketch to warm up based on the cover. It's tricky, as you need to make bolder choices on what is shade or not when using a Sharpie, and Loomis is using several levels of value here. Nevertheless, the result is ... not terrible, though Sharpie resolution limits the drawing, and I missed some delicateness of the face's features. But on a closer, side-by-side inspection, you can see some of the flaws more clearly:
Lining up the nose and mouth (which matched best, shown in light grey above) revealed three or four things right off. First, I had missed a tilt to the head (corrected in the side-by-side above). Second, I had made the mouth too small and high compared to the jaw (in the correction, this shows up as the jaw being too low, but the real problem was the reverse, as I started with the jaw; the eyes being too high is another part of this overall misestimation of facial features). Third, the hair is too small, showing I'm decent locally, but not great at getting the overall page distances - what I call the "landscape" - correct. This means a feature may be OK, but their relationships may be bad.
Fourth, I'm still having control problems on drawing lines. You can see this most easily with the left eyebrow. Three out of four of my lines land where I want them to, and the fourth seems to pop to a wholly different place. Perhaps this is just a need for practice, practice, practice, but given that I have a history of RSI issues, I plan to keep an eye on this.
Nevertheless, I enjoy the Sharpie sketches, because they're quick, you have to commit, and you get near-immediate feedback about whether the ideas you're trying are working, as opposed to various forms of full render, where I can get lost in the trees without realizing I've set the forest on fire.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Quick sketch of FKA Twigs. Despite my best efforts redrawing the face 2-3 times in non-repro blue, her features swam towards the bottom right of her face, and her jaw isn't angular enough. Features being good relative to each other but poor with respect to the face seem to be one of my problems. This one might be a good candidate for a trace of the picture in vellum to see the difference between the lines I drew and the lines that are actually there (insofar as lines exist in pictures, which they sorta don't).
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. 300+ words so far, will try to push a little bit more before crashing. Only ~2700 words to go for the month. 
Another quick sketch of Arnold Schwarzenegger, again roughed with non-repro blue, but this time more properly rendered with Sakura Graphic 1 and Micron 03 and 08. I was wondering if the sketch would turn out better if I properly rendered it, even quickly, using finer instruments than a Sharpie.
Head tilt is not quite far back enough, but ... it looks better rendered in something less blunt than a Sharpie.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. And 2000+ words, only ~3000 left for the month. Go nano! 
Quick Sharpie sketch of Arnold Schwarzenegger, roughed first in non-repro blue as I really wanted to work on the eyes and landscape first, then cleaned up and very lightly shaded in Photoshop as it's late and I want to turn in. Eh, the eyes are still a notch too big, and lopsided, despite my efforts, but, it's not as completely terrible as some of the other sketches.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. and 2400+ words too. 
Suuuper quick Sharpie sketch of a character from Stargate. Not terrible, but I think I need to focus on getting that egg shape of the human head a little bit more consistent (and one of the eyes got squished, but then, it's a suuuper quick Sharpie sketch without any roughs).
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. Wrote 3600+ words today (and 8100+ words yesterday, when all was said and done). 
Astronaut Chris Hadfield, roughed in non-repro blue and then quick-sketched with a Sharpie. The face is ... way off to me. At first I couldn't see what was wrong, other than it was wrong; then later, I think the real Chris's head is more egg-shaped, even though it is pretty angular, and his eyes are farther apart. Once again, I think I got caught up in the micro-details instead of the overall architecture.
But then I did write 5900+ words so far today, so I feel good about that.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick sharpie sketch of David Goodstein, from The Mechanical Universe science TV show (and many popular books). I loved The Mechanical Universe; it's what I watched prior to reading The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Again used the non-repro blue to rough it, focusing very, very hard just on the shape of the face and not the rendering. I actually like how the shape came out.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. And wrote 2300 words too.
Vincent van Gogh from "Vincent and the Doctor". Roughed in non-repro blue on Strathmore 9x12, outlined in Sakura Pigma Graphic 1 and rendered in that and Sakura Micron 08, 03, and 005, plus Sakura Pigma Brush. I erased part of the non-repro blue to try to clean it up, which ended up being a mistake as it destroyed some lines, leaving white marks through the drawing; however, using Photoshop's Black and White feature with cyans almost taken to black and blue taken to white, it dropped out the blue while adding a nice warm shading to it.
Overall, not bad, though I am still squashing heads even when I am explicitly trying not to squash heads, and ending up with slight asymmetries, particularly in the left side of the beard, when I am explicitly trying to avoid that. But at least the eyes are not totally oversized this time.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
And just ~600 words too, though much of today was cats, taxes and work. Taxes are submitted to the accountant, the cat is home from the vet after a nasty gastrointestinal scare, work is progressing (RL is hard!), and Dakota Frost is having a great time doing SPOILERS with SPOILER, so, no excerpt for you. 
Quick sketch of H.P. Lovecraft. Not ... terrible ... per se, but I squashed his head, and there's something about the face that's wrong that also bothers me about the faces drawn by Steve Dillon in Preacher. Don't get me wrong - I love Preacher and Steve Dillon's art, but something has always struck me as slightly off about the faces in Preacher, and the same thing is going on here. If I knew what it was, I could probably fix it. But I don't, so I guess I just have to keep practicing.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. 1800 words. Getting back on track on Nano. 
Super quick sketch of Neil and the Protagonist in one of the most iconic shots from Tenet. Roughed with blue pen, sketched with Pigma Graphic 1 and Pigma Micron 08 and 03, scanned, de-blue-lined, and rendered in flat grayscales in Photoshop. Robert Pattinson is OK, maybe a little of the angularness of his head lost and a slight bloom in the jacket, but I appear to have squashed John David Washington's head.
Eh, it's a quick sketch. Gotta get back to taxes and writing.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick Sharpie sketch of Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, post-processed in Photoshop to get the cell shading. The left eye ended up warped, the overall face is stretched down compared to what it should be for someone viewed from this low angle (she's lying down on a tank, head leaned back).
I think what's going on with the distortions and so on is that I am not consistent in comparing my lines as I'm drawing them to their parallel features. My line control requires a lot of focus and therefore is very local, which draws my attention away from the corresponding features I should be matching.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Super quick sketch of Scarlett Johansson as the Major from Ghost in the Shell.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Imagine a man, who comes up tangentially during a writing session, and ends up having his mug featured in a quick Sharpie sketch on 9x12 Strathmore with no roughs whatsoever, capturing his likeness forever ... in the Twilight Zone. Meh, something's off, but I can't figure out what, with my drawing of Mr. Serling.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. Wrote 3600 words too. 
Technically not a drawing, but the outcome of some Photoshop experimentation to see if I could turn the 
I like this simple version better, but I'm not committing to either right now; it was just an experimental idea to see if it was feasible, and also to practice some Photoshop. A final version would need a little more work on the blend of the cover, which is a quick hack right now.
Drawing, designing, Photoshopping every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. 1800 words. Starting to get a little more rhythm in the story. Rough draftiness:
Quick Sharpie sketch of Dita von Teese. Not bad overall, but I ended up badly screwing up the proportions and made her face so tall I had to shrink it vertically about 10%, which ... actually, wasn't so bad, compared to the original:
Ran across a more fetish-themed image of her as I was trying to design a waitress for a scene in SPIRAL NEEDLE; I judged said picture was too steamy for this drawing series, and the waitress ended up in a different outfit anyway, so you get a sketch of a glamour shot instead.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. 1700+ words on SPIRAL NEEDLE. Ahead of the wordcount, behind on how much I need to do to catch up, but at least, catching up is happening now.
Super quick sketch of Patrick Troughton. Drawing every day. And wrote 1100 words.
-the Centaur 
Sharpie sketch of Leslie Nielsen, another actor who has played a vampire (came up with Dakota mocking (in her head) a vampire she met). Roughed in non-repro blue, which was surprisingly easy to remove in Photoshop, but actually made it a little bit hard to tweak the roughs to get the landscape right (hence the tilted smile) and Sharpies, while forcing me to work quickly and helping me learn the role of blacks and whites in composition, are still doing no favors on the rendering.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. 1900+ words on SPIRAL NEEDLE. Onward. 
Sketch of myself during the Write to the End writing group reading sessions. Eh, meh on the quick sketch, but I've got writing to do more than I need to be sketching.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick Sharpie sketch of Roger Moore. Head's a bit squashed, but it's not too bad. I admit, I threw my first drawing away and made myself start over, rather than deal with one messed up line in his right jawline. It's interesting to me how much of the character of even a very young Roger Moore is made up not just by that whale of a jaw, but by the subtle lines all over his face. He was strangely old even when young.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P.S. Only ~800 words today, which was quite a struggle. Roger Moore came up very tangentially when Dakota was snarking about a vampire looking like a cross between Roger Moore and Leslie Nielsen.