Many budding portraitists start by doing pictures of old Fred down the road or their children and while this is perfectly commendable, none of their acquaintances can tell whether a Good Likeness has been captured unless the subject is known to the critic.
The Rod Jones solution - draw celebs. Then, provided your critic is reasonably up on who's who, the budding portraitist will be able to gauge progress by the speed of recognition of the subjects drawn.
Here is a selection - some bang up to date but a lot that I did earlier (some of them about 9 years earlier so allow for them being a little younger than they are now - or in the case of one or two of them - alive)
The pictures are shown without any identification so that you can see whether you can recognise them. Just hover the mouse pointer over the picture and the picture will melt away to reveal the identity of the suspect.
