A critical element of improvement, if one truly aspires to improve significantly, is frequent practice. Not enough time is only an acceptable excuse if failure to improve is an acceptable outcome. Portrait drawing is more and more intriguing to me lately, partly because doing it well allows very little room for error. It is especially challenging for me, working primarily with myself as a model, with my own image in a mirror. Sometimes I get pretty frustrated with the results, and I feel tempted to do one from a photograph, but I'm sticking to the rule that I've had for a long time against drawing from photos.
self portrait with Talbert Rhodesian, Prismacolor pencils