Here’s my 6 pages of 5 in 1 warm-up combos - helps me come to terms with warm-up pages in sketchbook 🤓. These were nice exercises in maintaining consistent focus - I generally have the attention span of a puppy so this helps. A question on rotating the page- is the goal to be able to pull the lines with quality in every direction or would even experienced drafters work with arms moving in a preferred direction and rotate page as needed?

Wow - video was super clarifying. Realize I was totally focussed on each line and not the bigger shapes /ideas/rhythms etc Here’s my post video efforts (red) and perfectionist, unfinished, pre video attempts example (graphite). Gonna need to shop for a new red pencil…

I’m definitely a ‘lost lines’ by default but it does really help to quickly express and refine ideas. One question - when moving from the neater searching lines to clean lines, would you always need to trace (light table or scan and digitize) or do clean lines come for an entire drawing with ease once you get the experience? If the default is trace how do you not lose the dynamic line quality? Nice video to show the options 👍

Here’s my level two effort - an Aye-Aye (they live in the Madagascan rainforest and have weird finger and tooth adaptations for digging grubs out of tree bark). He quickly turned into a bit of a slob in my brainstorming…there may be some psychology here…a kind of self-portrait perhaps 😂 I’m surprised by how I was able to get my mental picture out of my head and onto paper (thumbnails to practice sketches to mapping the main shapes out to CSI tapering), but I see my line work is a bit hit and miss - probably it was a bit too many fiddly and complex forms for this exercise. So, I’ll keep practicing them lines! One tip - I spent ages trying to find references of hands in the right position but couldn’t find any…then realized that I have hands. So I used those. Probably just me but, you never know 🥳

Back to the boots, attempting tapered csi….shorter lines still got a bit scratchy but longer lines feel good. Any thoughts on tapering vs ellipses and minimum line length I.e., to taper, or not to taper? That’s my question…trying to taper several lines to make a complete ellipse seems a bit pointless but I could be missing something. Guess I should try the laces tomorrow 😭

A camera to finish

Another simplified portrait in 5 tones….quite a lot of side by side shapes/forms with same tone but tried to ‘shade’ an edge zone rather than just outline to keep them separate. Only real lines define the forms of the white shirt. Photo credit: Bruce Gilden

How do people get photos without shadows on their paper. Seems no matter what I do, I end up with something casting a shadow.

Tried to generate more focus with some rules - ghost each ellipse until sure, get in the first pass, then overlap only once to see how accurate the movement repetition can be….then straight onto next ellipse. The worst one coincided with my wife laughing at her TV series, shattering my focus into a million pieces (she goes hysterical and high pitched). But, honestly, even with focus it is really tough to get good overlap for each ellipse…10,000 more maybe

Dave…

Tools..

C’s, S’s n’ I’s…..

Not easy with a brush pen 🖊️ Good fun with the rest though 🍄

Portrait attempt having watched both the critique videos. Conscious of sticking to just five tones but my pencil pressure is not always consistent. Some outline angles and proportions are a bit off - interesting how these become obvious only once finished but unseen when actually doing the lay-in! It’ll be that practice thing! (Photo credit: Bruce Gilden)

Sweet Potato III: Smudge-a-geddon

Sweet Potato II: The Pear Of Despair

A sweet potato…cos the pear wouldn’t stand up 🤫