I picked a random photo off the internet for my study. I am not new to portrait drawing, but one thing that I learned from this lesson was the method of picking a unit of measurement and sticking with it. I've done something similar in the past, where I have choosed one point (and one point only) to use as a reference to measure angles from. The reason being that the first point is the only one you can fully trust to measure from, as each added point from that on will have an error to it. And then, if you keep measuring from each point added, the error will potentially grow. However, that approach ended up being very technical to the point where I could just have used a grid or tracing to get things done. I like this method more, as it keeps to the principle of only using the pencil to measure.

I did this exercise at work, on post-it notes, so apologies for the poor image quality. I might make some more digitally as well before moving on. It was a fun project, and the best part of it is that I can see this approach incorportated in a normal worklow, even in cases where the end goal is realism.

I revisited this challenge before moving on, and went for the skull by Jeff Watts this time. I felt that this turned out better than my last attempt, and I think it was a good idea to choose a simpler subject to study.

Here is a non complete study of a drawing by none other than Kim Jung Gi. I didn't complete is since about halfway through I realized that I didn't really pay enough attention to the actual lines of the original drawing. The amount of detail sort of overwhelmed me, and I ended up looking more at proportions. I'll do another master study, probably of the skull in the demon this time, and really try to focus on the lines instead of all the proportions.

I picked the level 1 for this one, as I had limited time today. Might do level 2 as well some time.

I might have deviated a bit from the project goal here, but at least I had fun doing it :)

This was a fun exercise. I did the penguin and hand first, and tried to loosen up more when drawing the girl.

Here is Level 2 - Skellie. Time to watch the demos!

Other than drawing a camel (for the first time in my life!) I spent the day doing some line art and masking of a visual novel character I am working on. I hope that counts as being part of the "draw every day" challenge, in which case I am now on day three :) (I do not count course projects towards the daily drawing, as I try to follow the Draw a Box "rule" of spending 50% of my time on personal stuff),

I tried going a bit faster this time around, and to simplify more. Just Skellie left now!

I am not sure if I approached this one correctly, but I felt that compared to the snail this image was several degrees harder to approach. I have not watched Stan's demo yet, so it will be very interesting to see how he did it. While my drawing is passable, I think I failed quite hard with the CSI approach - the amount of detail was simply too overwhelming for me, so I found it hard to simplify. It will be interesting to watch the demo video, to hopefully get an idea about how to think in cases like this.

During today's drawing I learned something that helped explaining why many of my drawings end up feeling stiff - especially when clothes are involved. I realized that often even when I got a decent, dynamic pose, I end up ruining the gesture by drawing clothes that do not conform to the motion that I want to convey. In this case I was on the verge of doing the same thing, but luckily caught myself in the sketch stage. In the attached image is the before and after version of Little Red Hood. The idea was to make her body twisting, with her head continuing the motion (as shown with the rough shapes to the right). However, when I added her skirt I just left it hanging straight down with her legs standing straight together (left image). This killed the motion, and something felt really off because of it. Normally I just shrug and move on to refined line art and shading, but this time something clicked. I corrected the skirt so that it followed the pose more closely, and I feel that the new result (middle one) works much better.

Level 1, part 1 of the CSI assignment. I'll do the shoes next. Feedback greatly appreciated!

Daily random sketching. I suppose it might be a good idea to get some none course related drawing in every day as well.

Having recently moved from traditional drawing to digital, I have to say that this was quite a lot harder on my screenless tablet that it was doing it on paper. I think this will be a very useful exercise to get used to the tablet, though, so I'll definitely do it again :)

Here is level 2 of the first assignment. Quite a lot more difficult, and I definitely strayed a bit from the "rules" this time around, but I tried my best to stick to distinct values, avoiding blending too much. Please feel free to provide feedback/critique!

I kind of messed up my first submission for this assignment, as I had not properly read the part that says we should limit ourselves to five values. I decided to redo this one, and will move on to Level 2 next. Please feel free to provide feedback/critique!

I'm not sure i did this assignment correctly :( Can someone help explain the shapes and the values? how do you get sharp edges with light areas? Thanks in advance

Here is my take on the first project (Level 1). I will likely attempt level 2 as well tomorrow. Please feel free to provide feedback!

My first steps into this course. These are some 30 second gestures to start out. The goal was to have decent line economy, but I am wondering if I am losing out on important information by using so few lines per pose. Also, I am wondering if it is even possible (for me) to add more detail in such limited time, while still keeping the proportions at least somewhat decent. Several of the poses already have quite questionable measurements, but I guess that will improve with more practice.