I recently found this artwork and decided to analyze it. It has quite sharp facial features, and good shading, and it served as the inspiration for me to strive to get more realistic faces in my previous pic.
There are many aspects that make it great, but i wanted to concentrate on the face. Analyzing it finally gave me a good way to make the eyes and eyelashes look actually 3 dimensional. The arch of the eyebrow is a bit exaggerated, but the anatomy is still attractive.
Around the eyes, and all over the drawing really, the artist uses both area shading as well as lines for the more sharp features. Interestingly, he doesn't always use black, which was something that i tried to do in my earlier drawings. Using lines of a color only somewhat darker than the surrounding natural shadow helps it blend in and look better than if it was black(You can see it on the upper rim of the eyelid and the lips, both in his and my pic. Aside from that, putting a slight highlight before a shadow helps it pop out better without needing to use stronger tones.
Nose and lips are just pure anatomy. Using big round shapes for the lips and sharper ellipses for the nose.
Ears were quite confusing at first, and i still don't quite get them right, but for mofu in general using overlaping groups of sharp strokes seems to be most of the technique.
Hair however is still a mystery to me. Will have to do more work on that.
There are many other things the artist did right(and some that he did wrong, like her butt looks flat, although i guess that's not the center of attention), but these were the ones relevant to the face study.