Hi, that's an awesome portrait and you did a fine job shading it overall. In order to make it pop a little more, I'd lean more into the contrast between light and dark and therefore introduce generally darker values and a few highlights. Especially the hair is mostly one unanimous block, so I tried to give it a bit more form. With the directional lighting from the left side you could exaggerate the shadow shape even more, as we are working sort of with a 50/50 split of the face. In traditional, when working with graphite, it will be very beneficial if you get some really heavy, dark pencils, like 8B or even charcoal based ones for really deep black tones to make them pop more. And potentially a good quality white pencil to get even lighter, or a white marker that can draw over graphite for nice, bright highlights. Generally, a face will often catch highlights at certain plane changes, and common ones are at the tip and bridge of the nose, or at the edge of the lips and potentially at the lower lip (but that often makes characters look a bit glossy and female if you over do that one). Also small highlights in the pupils and the tearducts make eyes seem more alive. A very stylistic choice from my side is giving the character an outline, to distinctly make it pop from the also middle-toned background. For facial proportions, be sure to watch out for a neck that is becoming a little thin and maybe decreasing the length of the nose a little. Overall, great job though! | Artwod Feedback