Pencil portrait drawings

A pencil portrait drawn based on a photo can only be as good as the photo.
Have you ever seen a photo of someone you know, and say to yourself, "this doesn't really look like him." We've all seen photos like that.

Even a camera, which is objective, is only as good as the lighting, the lens quality, and doesn't always capture a perfect likeness of a person or pet.
So when an artist draws from a photo, the photo or likeness is going to be at least one generation away from what the person looks like - maybe more, because the artist's perception of the printed image plays into the resulting pencil portrait.

So always keep in mind, when you commission a pencil portrait drawing from an artist, the artist should (and in my case, WILL) always do his or her best, but it is going to be imperfect, because human beings are imperfect.