Been looking forward to this assignment, since i’ve been going to a weekly life drawing session (uninstructed) and starting to feel more confident. Unfortunately I started getting frustrated at the beginning of the assignment and had to remember Stan’s advice and remember it’s a process. Tried to have more confident lines, instead of scratchy searching lines. Most definitely felt more confident by the last drawings, still have a long way to go.

Fun assignment. It’s really challenging to keep the pose and gesture loose and dynamic when you start adding a few details. It’s amazing how rigid the drawings can start to feel. I hope that some of the movement and dynamism was captured in these.

I tried to be loose with my approach for this project so that it could help me push the shape design to an almost breaking point to help me avoid stiffness and aim for dynamism instead. Looking back I definitely could've been a lot looser with my sketches so as to allow the lines to be flowier and really exaggerate the shapes.

Level 1- picked some of my favorites to go with references, still struggling with gesture versus contours.

ThIs is so hard. Not done but I am currently on vacation with my family and I tried to squeeze it in. I realized that at some point I draw with angled lines rather than with shapes. Not sure if that is understandable.

My attempts at measuring proportions, one with charcoal and the other with blue 2mm "lead". Like many have commented, it is a lengthy process, especially for beginners. I have "tried" using these techniques before but this time I really did stick to it and found the result to be very positive. Unfortunately, if you can see the overlays (they're very lite) you can tell I was still way off.

Very excited to get started but I was wondering, after reading the user agreement, about posting our work to the other social media platforms. Is it okay to and if so, any suggestions on how you would prefer we do and not do it? I’m probably overthinking it but I would rather ask than not.

Aaron Blaise is awesome and I’ve watched his lesson multiple times.

I like these warmups so much, I combined them with the mushroom warmup. Also, I have a cheap sketchbook dedicated to just warmups and do them every time before I draw.

Being limited to 10 shapes or less was tough. You had to think intently about what to include or exclude.

Level 2 ish attempt, struggling to break away from just recreating the photo. Very envious of how many have created a cool stylized cartoon look. Guess I will have to just get back to working at it. Just enjoying the journey!

Level 1 assignment, tried going with simple shapes but it’s more difficult then it sounds. My water buffalo looks more like a b-string superhero.

Hooray for shapes, looking forward to making more easily readable characters. Seem to always get bogged in the details, making it hard to fix mistakes. Also, Stan your personal trainer must be the best! lol

Study of a Frank Cho dinosaur, tried to apply Stan’s advice from critiques. Except I should have broke it into small pieces, instead of recreating the whole thing. By placing them side by side, you can really see all the errors.

Congratulations, looking forward to this course. Is this the IP you were talking about on Draftsmen episode “How to Price Artwork “! (I think that’s the episode) Would love to see a new Draftsmen about it!

Study of one of my absolute favorites, Bruce Timm. His lines at first glance seem very simple but are quite complicated in fact. He uses slight variations in thickness and direction to subtly show form. Look close at his Poison Ivy’s arm and you can see a suggestion of her deltoid.

Heinrich Kley study. First thing I did was create an underline structure to draw over. Most of the artists I admire, that utilized lines in their works, have a very loose quality to them. Where mine are very stiff feeling, when I try to reproduce them. So I tried being more loose, with this one.

Master study of comic book artist Erik Larsen, tried using what I learned from David Finch’s tutorial.

Thank you Stan for your critique and advice. I was very excited and nervous to see something I did in a critique video. I have watched both David Finch and Ryan Benjamin’s videos before, I am a fan of both of their works. I found the Proko David Finch video on How to Cross Hatch for Comics very helpful and watched it multiple times, even replicating what he did to my best. I tried tackling the rhino and cross hatch it again but got frustrated with my results, I’m trying to slow down, focus on quality, and follow David’s advice. This is my progress so far, along with my other attempts.

Level -1: Decided to stick with paper and ink, instead of digital. Hope it’s ok I added some extra lines, especially on the light and shadow.