Page Skating is very fun

Day 14. Enjoy this slight nightmare fuel lol.

Day 13. I drew a little too big so I couldn't get the legs in.

Day 12. Should've sketched it vertically instead.

Day 11. Couldn't find anything really interested to draw nearby so I decided to do a quick sketch of one of my favorite comic book characters. Also today I learned: Fingers are rough to draw lol.

Day 10. Just a quickish sketch b/c I had a lot to do today. It always shows up lighter than it actually is when I take the picture lol.

Day 9. After watching 5 minutes of Proko's demo video of the snail and boots, I went back and did the snail again. I definitely drew it way faster this time vs the first time, and on top of that, it looks better! What I learned immediately: Embrace the rough sketch and don't sweat the small stuff right away, you can clean it later. The first time I did the snail assignment I didn't really try a rough sketch at first, I was too focused on just trying to just draw it. From now on, I'm gonna start taking small notes and little tips that I've figured out along the way to help me out. I'll probably also go back to earlier Proko videos as well to take some good notes.

Day 8. Didn't know what to draw so I went with something quick and simple. Turns out it wasn't so simple! Even when it comes to things like this I always think about it a little too much, which leads to hesitation and questioning AS I put my line down on the paper. Again, it's easy when you're just drawing circle/ellipses with no real direction. But as soon as you have a subject, it just feels entirely different. Like you're criticizing every small stoke you do as you're doing it. At least that's my case.

Day 7. Was drawing this while I was on break but unfortunately didn't get to finish in time before my break was over lol. Freehanding straight lines are harder than I thought. Might be hard to see b/c i was sketching very lightly.

Day 6. I'm still feeling out the 2mm mechanical pencil I'm using but I must say, I'm definitely glad I switched to it. So much easier when sketching outlines and whatnot. I did get lazy when it came to the details on the flaps and around the shell lol. I'm kinda happy with this one

Missed day 5 yesterday, so here it is. Big circle definitely could've been drawn better. Plus, the whole drawing should've been a bit longer.

Day 4. For the life of me I can't find the reference pictures again lol (if I manage to find it, I'll add it in). But other than that, good news! I switched from 0.9 mechanical pencil to a HB 2mm mechanical pencil that I use for my HB shading and now it feels like everything just "clicks" when I draw. It's way easier to lightly sketch in things now.

Day 3. I wanted to draw something different then just plants and vases but I didn't really know what for a while until this popped into my head. I love medieval/medieval fantasy so I decided to draw some armor. This one took a while for me to do. I still don't feel confident in my lines yet as sometimes when I'm drawing a curve or anything, I would double check WAYY too often if that curve or line is accurate enough to the picture itself. I feel more confident when I'm just drawing curves and lines with no intent vs with intent in creating something. Things I noticed about myself when drawing this is I have a hard time drawing from the elbow and shoulder when it comes to smaller details and whatnot (I assume it's not just me lol). I tried really hard to not draw with my fingers when it came to making small C-curves. Guess I'll just get better with time.

Not gonna lie, definitely feels like my worst ones yet lol. I did the boots first, and I felt pretty demotivated as I was drawing them because it felt worse and worse as I kept going. The snail felt like I did things better when it came to doing the curves than the boots but the end result came out looking off and made me feel pretty "meh" about it. All in all, I'm not satisfied at all/little bit demotivated with how I did this time around, but I decided to share them anyway. PS: I know I have LOTS to work on but the one thing I specifically noticed; it's very hard for me to press lightly when using a mechanical pencil and I prefer not to switch to something else. So I'm gonna need to work on my pressure more too.

Day 2. I had a some trouble trying to get the curve of the vase down correctly, so it took a couple of tries. Ghosting definitely helped me get shape of the vase even if it did take longer than I anticipated. I tried my best to draw bigger with this one and I'm pretty satisfied with that! Except I might have made it a little too big because I started running out of room near the top for the leaves lol. At first I wasn't going to add the little details to some of the leaves to keep it simple, however, it looked too bland so I decided to do it to some of them. When it came to shaping the leaves (specifically ones that overlapped with another), I got nervous and started drawing them slowly which (sadly) made my lines a bit shaky. So I went over those again and darkened them to try to smoothen it out a bit. Tried to get the stems and leaves to somewhat accurate spots like the picture, I think I did somewhat alright? And again like the last drawing, I didn't draw every single leaf. I didn't add any cross hatch or anything like that to keep the overall drawing as simple as I could have done. Maybe I should try something else next time since it feels a little overwhelming as of right now.

Day 1. I definitely could've drawn it bigger lol, I need to get out of my habit of drawing small. It's obviously not 1 to 1 but I tried my best.

So I've gone back and tried to get better and more consistent at shading, but it always feels like a mess. How do you guys get consistent shading down so far? Do you shade vertically first, and then horizontally until get that perfect shade down? How about using the sharp side vs dull side of your pencil or a mixture of the two?

I tried my best. I was definitely shaky when drawing the shape of it lol. I used a 0.9mm lead for the drawing and a 2.0 HB for the shading. Things I've learned from this assignment is that I definitely need a second 2.0 mechanical pencil (maybe 2HB?) for more shading options as I noticed right off the bat that getting a darker shade was difficult, and also I need to be not so nervous lol. Hopefully that comes with time.