I've been drawing a bit more recently. It's been very relaxing and enjoyable. I attempted to track my progress in the wee hours this morning, as I drew, by taking some pictures with my digital camera. Some of them came out crappy. I used a 2B and 2H pencil on my 60lbs 9"x12" drawing pad with a kneaded eraser and some tortillon pencils I made using this link Making Your Own Tortillon.

I'm sorta happy with the outcome, but it doesn't look much like the reference pic below.

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Initial sketch. This photo came out crappy and the sketch was barely visible so I ran auto-color in photoshop on the image to bring it out more.	I worked on the eyes and hair and darkened things a tad. I started this image differently than I have in the past. I began sketching the eyes first rather than the shape of the head.
More hair work and increased shading. I started with the eyes in the initial sketch as an experiment since most other features of the face can be aligned by distance in eye width (i.e. distance between eyes is generally about 1 eye width.)	I really start darkening things in here and make some corrections in the far portion of the nose which was a little off and looked stunted when viewed in a mirror. The old mirror trick made me catch numerous really bad things in the initial sketch.
I darkened things up, brought out the big guns (my 2B) and went to town. This is the finished image, which I stood up on my toilet seat and took a picture of. I figured that was a fitting spot for it.
And here's the glorious reference photo. As mentioned, mine looks nothing like it really (I actually think my drawings eyes more resemble Audrey Hepburns in the thumbs above). I'd like to be able to draw her perfectly, but it's not too depressing, I'm getting a little better and I get relaxed doing it. So unlike other endeavours I don't berate myself so much over it. Besides, I'm better at drawing than a lot of people, so that gives me a sense of satisfaction.