Sketching from TV to Practice Heads

I know that I have learned the most about drawing by practicing with live subjects out in public.  You have to be quick, you can't fuss, you observe and make a drawing and move on.  Hours and hundreds of sketches have helped boost my confidence and my skill.

But I still really suck at drawing heads and faces.

And I'm not even aspiring to make a head or face look like an actual someone.  I'm just trying to get basic proportions right inside of my own comic style.

I also know that tracing some of the comics artists I most admire has helped me learn new and exciting ways to draw things.

So I decided that tracing photos of heads/faces in action might help me.

I do this while watching TV, just to make it a bit more fun (and to get more value out of my TV-watching time).

I take a picture on my iPad of a favorite actor.

I load that photo into Procreate on a layer and then drop the opacity so it is barely visible.

Then, on a new layer, using whatever tool seems fun, I sketch the head, tracing the contours of the photo.

Then I play with shading to try to understand volume better.

Here are some examples from Wire in the Blood.

This is all just for practice, of course.  But I do find myself having aha! moments about shadows and structures, things I've read about and tried, but could never quite make work.