Still new at this art thing

Helpful tip that I always keep in mind to make things stand out; push the contrast. Make the extremely dark areas so dark like extremely dark but at the same time keep light areas as light as possible. The camera might have messed with how your piece looks, but definitely push the contrast a lot more especially around creases.

Looking fantastic so far!

Yeah, my teacher told me the same thing. Although I hadn't started with the charcoal yet either, so I've touched the creases up and the shading in general around the brows and eyelids. Another thing I've also done is blended the end of the nose into the shadow on the upper lip so it's not as noticeable.