Something that's often overlooked but incredibly helpful when starting is to make sure your initial 'blobs' closely follow the contours you're aiming for. I've experimented with using blobs only for major forms versus just using boxes, and I've personally found it most effective to try and blob out every form before committing to a hard structure. Also, I've noticed I'm having an easier time rounding corners on my boxes than keeping them sharp, which makes me wonder if I'm developing a bad habit.

I love blobs so much. it's such a quick way to jot down poses for anything.

It's always nice to know that you can start thinking with 2d forms before solidifying them as boxes. It's much quicker to use blobs to make new drawings.

I drew things around me (water bottle, tab mate, lens cleaner, piranha plant). I tried to not go much further than one-layer sketches, as I feel like this is where I am making foundational mistakes. My problem doesn't seem to be simplifying as much as it is drawing simple volumes in space. The bounding boxes were the hardest part, and that's not a great sign!

Hi I'm Dead. I like doing digital art and hope one day to use it to tell stories people love. Here are some of the pieces that inspire me with their use of perspective and composition. I hope to understand pieces like these more for my own work.

Attached are my thumbnails, value study, and a full render. I know the render wasn't part of the assignment, but I was curious to see how it would turn out. Did anyone else notice a resemblance between the statue and Marshall?

I am really happy to learn more about 2D shape design philosophy within the bounds of 3D representation. This project helped me redesign my process to ensure my pen strokes remained hard and details were pushed out, no matter what. This felt impossible, as I constantly wanted to blend my edges or fall back to a traditional layering process. Thankfully, I kept redoing the assignment until I finally felt I had a grasp of how to organize darks and lights. Here are some notes I took along the way: - Actually squint; don't just try to generalize. Squinting reveals the actual values without the barrier of focusing on one area. - Darks are blobby lakes (keep these simple and connected). - Midtones are rivers (this from the video unlocked so much). - Highlights are "texture islands" (it's okay to separate these to show emphasis).

Gestures are fantastic. Every time I do them I feel like I learn something new.

Here are my balls. As I got more time, I added more complexity to the layering and lighting process. The biggest thing that helps is a layer below my drawing that solidifies objects with tone instead of just exposing the paper/canvas underneath.

I took my time to ensure these thumbnails were useful for creating a piece. I know they have blended edges in places and too much detail for a notan study, but I didn't want to ignore the momentum I gained treating this like an actual project. I hope it's still valuable as an exercise! Feedback is always appreciated!