Self Portrait a Week: Week 3

This week I was a bit ambitious and tried to sketch an picture where I am with another person. This is from a vacation Patti and I took last year, this is at Hot Springs Arkansas on February 28, 2014:

In this case I think I did better at shading. Getting Patti close to recognizable was a task because she isn't fully in the frame and getting anything close to her nose was a huge task. I think I'm a long way off of creating recognizable portraits for the most part. Here is the source I used to sketch:

I can see a lot of room for improvement in getting proportions right too.

When I haven't been attempting self-portrait I have been practicing shading. I tried just trying to make a circle look like a sphere, I tried an apple and I think I learned the most working on sketching this stone skull:

The thing I learned most from working with the skull was how to dissect the skull into two different shapes and then bring the depth out by shading and adding additional lines. But I still have a long way to go.