>>7677316
I limited myself to a hard textured black pencil and eraser to try and emulate what you did to get a sense of what's going wrong, and I'm glad I did. It's way too fucking hard to draw such a delicate face with this kind of tool. It's possible, but I was struggling with it constantly to stop it from looking too harsh. I just wanted to stop trying.

My immediate advice would be to find a way to start your drawings lighter and work up. Either pick something other than pure black, reduce the opacity or maybe work in layers. You should try using a soft eraser as well. Squint at your references to make the darkest areas stand out.

More general advice would be to try being more considerate of what your lines mean. You outlined her lips and eyebrows into cut-out shapes and the more hard lines you put on a womans face the more haggard she gets. Try to think about the differences between plane changes, outlines, tone shifts and colour changes.