Attempt at learning from David Malan’s drawing “Natalie”. It quickly became clear that I could not maintain any semblance of the expression he captured in the hair by trying to meticulously copy every pencil stroke. So I tried to keep the “spirit” of his approach -even if much less skillfully.

Stan, would you please elaborate on what you mean by rhythm? I’ve heard/read several artists refer to rhythm in very different ways. In this video I take your comments to mean that finding a rhythm is finding a line that shows a gesture, but that this line becomes lost and found - so the eye follows the gesture but has to do a little work to connect its parts, thereby making the drawing more engaging for the viewer’s mind? Am I close?

Here are my level one attempts. I’ll go back and try these again after watching Stan’’s demo - I know I failed at the loose sketching approach - but I tried. For the VR girl I included the first gesture sketch that I did - I defined the drawing’s envelop, found the midpoints of the figure (vertical and horizontal, but then didn’t do any more measuring - I just tried to find the right shapes to fit on the gesture.

Spent a couple of hours sketching in a coffee shop with the Asheville Plein Aire painting group (in the winter we move indoors). Worked on line quality (still got a long way to go) and saying more with less….

One of my own hiking boots. Perspective of the toe seems a bit wonky, but to be fair, I have pretty small feet.

For those of us struggling with the boot laces, maybe this internet dad joke will provide some levity: I bought some boots from a drug dealer. I don’t know what he laced them with, but I was trippin all day.

The shot of the camel was more of a complex structure so I found myself firstly roughing in the big shapes and gesture lines for the legs etc. The head itself, I decided to try and draw a box to help me figure out how to break the shape down, noticing the planes of the head that I could see, a bit of the front plane, the side plane and the under plane. This turned out to be really helpful in helping me to place the features. 

Tried Skelli, but struggled a lot with proportions so it got pretty sloppy.

trying hard to simplify with CSI, but some part of brain always seems to take over and start squiggling,

Here’s my attempt at the boots. Don’t think I managed to simplify the lines as directed.

Couldn’t resist a value study in watercolor. From ref #2.

Another go at ref #1. I’m using Strathmore drawing paper, but I feel like I’m fighting the paper texture- maybe working larger would help. This pear is about 5” high.

Pears from refs 2 & 3, plus portrait attempts before and after watching the demo. A lot more measuring and erasing the second time around. All that erasing ruining any chance of seeping my shapes crisp. Comments/ crits welcome.