I have been focusing more on figure drawing rather than just faces as of late. One thing commonly done among artists drawing figures, are quick gesture drawings to help in determining poses. I generally do mine in ball point pen to prevent me from all the time and clean up I do when working in pencil. I recently found an additional benefit to derive from this visual shorthand of quick drawings. It makes an artist more fluent with the shapes they are working with, and able to establish those quickly in a preliminary drawing on canvas or such.
When drawing the skeleton below, instead of becoming overwhelmed by the task, it was easy to simply draw in the basic shapes quickly and lightly in pencil. Then I went back and refined each area more carefully and darker. This skeleton was not rendered from one image, but using many reference pics. I then came up with the general shapes to render quickly, and drew my composite. Although I did this with figure drawing, a person could easily use the same methods for any subject, familiarizing themselves with the basic shapes through many quick drawings.
