The last 2 are staged portraits of presidents, whereas the first I sketched off a screen grab while I was binge-watching a certain series...so what you perceive makes a certain amount of sense.

It interests me how "flat" presidential portraits were in the 90s and before, btw. Like, sure there was smoothing-over and professional make up and so on, but Photoshop and the like, I guess the growth of our photography culture (thanks, smart phones) has definitely made an impact on style and "good photography" since then. Compare a google of Clinton and Obama photos. One of the most popular Obama images is his troll grin. Clinton, you get these flat, washed-out, posed, formal officious images. It's really, really interesting.

The first one was also more difficult to sketch because it was from a "dark" series and usually, in film and media, if something is dark there's a big deal made of what angles people are shot at and such so as to visually display the darkness - which basically means a shit ton of shadows are thrown around everywhere. Or people's faces are deliberately half illuminated, half shadow (as with my sketch). As an amateur sketch-er, I run the risk of obliterating a lot of my work if I go too ham with the shadow.