I limited myself to 20 minutes per drawing to force myself to move fast and keep the sketch loose.

Went with physical paper instead of my iPad. Some smudges might be a result of my attempts to zoom in. Also, undo doesn't work as well on paper. And my iPad doesn't bleed sketches from other pages. But...it was a great exercise that taught me just how much I rely on technology. And I was a lot faster once I learned to live with my mistakes instead of retrying two dozen times.

Second attempt at the pear.

I "cheated" a little. I really struggled with proportions in my last attempt, so this time I created guidelines on the image and canvas, then used them to draw figure out proportions in each of the guide squares/areas. This really helped me to break apart the image, and I think the proportions are pretty good. I really struggled with using only two shadow values, and in the end dragged some of the light values into the dark areas to compensate. In the end, I wish the value assignments were reversed: 3 in the shadow, 2 in the light. That would have made this a little easier. Overall, though, I think it's a big improvement over my first attempt.

First attempt at portrait. Faces are hard; glad I bought the portrait course. Head isn't tilted, nose too large, and the jaw isn't right. But it is recognizably some derivative of the photo, so I'll take it. Shading is decent, although I'm pretty sure I ended up using too many values. I also think the dark side of the face isn't quite dark enough.

My first, using Procreate (iPad) with 4B Charcoal Brush. I limited myself to 30 minutes. My proportions are decent, though the pear looks a little thin. I need to practice more consistency with my shading, which was my biggest struggle. It was too easy to accidentally end up with a darker tone than I intended. As a result, I think I ended up with 6 tones instead of five. I also struggled to get my edges sharp enough, for similar reasons. But overall, I'm pleased. I think it came out decent.