Portrait 3 drawing

I have been moving along on the painting for my friend here. This was one of the first sketches in pencil to give myself the opportunity to study placement, values, shapes and edges before I went into paints. Doing the drawing in pencil first has been very helpful and it seems my first step in my portrait studies but hope that I can skip this stage in the near future. Although I've been really enjoying doing these drawings I think it will be good practice to keep doing more until I find them easier if that will ever come. Maybe when I have done hundreds.