Meg's Sketchbook: Looking for Improvement

[MissyInane]

Well, my name's Meg, and I'm a young artist looking to improve on portraits. I'm okay, and when I separate a sketch from it's reference it seems fine. But when you compare it to what I drew off of there's just not a lot of comparison. It's really irking me. I don't really have a lot of art supplies. I have:
1. Sketchbook I grabbed from the Dollar General
2. A book, "How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs" by Lee Hammond
3. 2 charcoal pencils, one soft, the other extra soft
4. 1 soft carbon sketch pencil
5. 1 ebony pencil
6. Extra black pencil, it just says "layout" on it. I don't really know what it is.
7. 1 graphite drawing pencil, 2B
8. 2 erasers
I don't know if that's a lot to work with. I'm so used to just using the drawing pencil that I forget that there are darker shades than that sometimes.

I used to have an account on deviantart, but I got tired of nobody really helping with my drawings and I got tired of the same old drama happening over and over again. I still use it sometimes. There are a lot of good photographs that make for nice reference.

I'd like some critique on using the pencils and I'd LOVE some critique to help me. What am I doing wrong with these portraits? They always seem to cartoon-y, and I think it's the eyes? I dunno. :/

For the first one, I used http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/...e+-in%3Ascraps as a ref.
The second one was drawn from the third one, which was in the book I got.
The last one was drawn from http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21362905/

Preemptive thanks!

[bluefruitbowl]

Hey! Congrats on your first post. I'd suggest doing some anatomy studies or such to help you "understand" what you are drawing, maybe that'd help with the ref'd/ non-ref'd disparity. Keep drawing, drawing, drawing. Also make sure youare drawing what you see, not what you think you are seeing, for example in the first thing you posted, the nose you drew over laps the with side of the cheek farthest away from the viewer, but it doesn't really do that in the photograph, you can see that cheek in the photo.
Hope you enjoy your stay!

[MissyInane]

Hey! Congrats on your first post. I'd suggest doing some anatomy studies or such to help you "understand" what you are drawing, maybe that'd help with the ref'd/ non-ref'd disparity. Keep drawing, drawing, drawing. Also make sure youare drawing what you see, not what you think you are seeing, for example in the first thing you posted, the nose you drew over laps the with side of the cheek farthest away from the viewer, but it doesn't really do that in the photograph, you can see that cheek in the photo.
Hope you enjoy your stay!

Thanks a bunch for the welcome, and for the nose thing! I didn't even notice that, haha.