"Old Man"

This is simply a sketch I threw together when I got bored one day, and decided to practice realism a little. It certainly isn't realistic, but it's noticeably not a cartoon either.

The only thing I was pleased with were the eyes. I realized that I needed a lot more practice on hair after this drawing, however.

I had no reference when coming up with this. Most professional artists... well, all of them to my knowledge, use a reference when drawing realistic faces. In other words, they're looking off of a real photo when they draw the image. That always seemed like cheating to me, since you're really not doing anything more than copying off of real life, putting down shades and lines where the photo tells you to put them down. I'm more of a conceptualist than a photographer though.