Gorilla in Graphite Pencil | Feedback

Dave sent me this lovely graphite drawing he has just completed of Gus the Gorilla. Dave has asked if I can give him a few tips on how this could be improved. Although I would not usually stray from the pastel pencil I thought you would be interested in my answers.Dave used the coloured photograph above to draw his study of this Gorilla and has made quite a good job of it too. However what would have been better is to reproduce this same photograph in black and white as I have done above, all computers are able to do this. This gives a much better reference as you can easily see the light and dark tones, which is really important in graphite work. When you compare the black and white photograph with Dave’s drawing you can see where the light and dark tones should be. I have ringed the more obvious areas with a red circle above. Another area to take note of is the bottom half of the face on the left side (see white arrows). Because this was not as obvious in the colour photograph Dave has misread the jaw line, fortunately being graphite this can be altered.Another area that could be changed is the smooth effect of the chest, here the Gorilla has virtually no hair and this is an ideal a job for the colour shaper.We are going to be featuring many new black and white drawings on the members site in the future, although it will be pastel pencil and not too much graphite, non the less similar rules apply to both mediums so I hope that these few tips will be of help to you all.