First Attempt at a Pencil Drawing

Read through alot of these posts, then decided to take a pic and have a go. I would really love to learn to do the "oil painting" techniques, but I figure if I cannot get a Photoshopped pencil drawing to come out decently, I probably won't be able to handle colors. Critiques welcome, even if you want to take the original and show me the error of my ways with your own.

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Awesome! Mine have never come out that good.

That is incredible. I love the selective detail, and the softness of areas. Forgive me for my rudeness, but is this photoshoped or hand drawn?

I couldn't even tell anybody how I did it exactly. I need to learn to write down my steps. I have only done 3 this morning, so I could figure it out again, and write down layer counts and filters for the next time. Thank you for the kind words. I have seen others and they have dazzled me, so I aspire to create the same effects as I have seen.

I would love to figure out how to do colors, that will be the next several days of tests after finishing an action list for the pencil conversion.

Here is my current smugmug gallery of my attempts at "pencil" drawing.

http://snapintime.smug​mug.com/gallery/308013​1#168072093

wow, came out really really good! u should figure out how u did it and make tutorial.