This is a really cool one. The variety of thick and thin forms makes it visually interesting.

Nice work, Dave! The angles on the form of the wooden car will make an excellent challenge, and so will the axles and wheels! Great job lining up those angles on your various viewpoints (top, side, and front and back). Drawing the orthos for this wooden vehicle brings you one step closer to drawing your own AMC Pacer from imagination. Thank you for introducing me to this cool car!

You did great overall with this assignment! I see what you mean about the back end of the 'b' not lining up. It's pretty simple when you think about it as if it was built into a box. Drawing the box in 1-point perspective will show you where the end lines up.

This looks epic. Great use of scale here.

You took a tough challenge, but you got it enough to feel good about what you did.

No worries, Itswalker. Please don't feel you need to match the reference exactly. When we practice drawing from reference, we are interpreting the image, so there will always be slight differences between your version and the reference. I tend to make the heads too big myself, and it's something to be aware of, but I think the head in the reference is a bit larger than normal proportions anyway to fit anime/manga style, so you might have been unconsciously adjusting that element to be more realistic (or heroic, because smaller heads are usually associated with heroic proportions too) without even realizing it! I think it's important here to concentrate on the strengths here too. I'm impressed by your attention to negative space. Two areas that really stand out to me are the curve formed by the belly and the raised leg and the knife arm, back, and weight-bearing leg. This practice is challenging, tough work, but I can see by this great focus that you are well on your way as an artist. Keep on practicing and growing, and who knows what amazing things you'll do in the future!

Hi there, MX2! I wanted to reach out and celebrate your imagination and invention! I love the way that you experimented with envisioning the owl as both a kind, older woman in a shawl, and, later, based on the forms of the head, an astronaut! An astronaut owl is an amazing, wonderful idea! Let your mind wander and follow these paths to help you create. My brain rarely works in a straight line, and it bounces from one connection to another just like yours. This is a normal part of creativity, and it sounds like you've got the process down well! Quantity leads to quality - the more ideas you pump out, the more likely you'll hit on a winner, like the astronaut owl or the woman in the shawl. Then, you can pick which idea you like best to develop as a drawing. Keep it up! Also, don't worry about being messy, as long it doesn't mix you up and confuse you from identifying the shapes and forms of the characters. Think of it like going to eat at your favorite restaurant. Let's say you're getting some pizza, and it comes out looking scrumptious! However, you don't see all the shredded cheese on the floor of the kitchen, the tomato sauce all over the cook's apron, and the dough dust coating everything in sight! You are cooking up a drawing, so messes are bound to happen along the way as you explore new ideas, shapes, and lines. You can always clean it up later by putting another paper over the first and cleaning up the lines. Having a light box really helps with this technique if you're working traditionally. That way, you can make your drawing polished and clean and ready to serve the viewer! I can also see you have taken a first, giant leap as an artist! I think you have the right idea to learn more about the bird's anatomy to help you grow, and there are plenty of great books that can help. One I like is David Sibley's Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. This volume is entirely illustrated by the author, so it give you plenty of accurate reference material, including some generalized examples of bird anatomy in the first few pages. However, before diving into the anatomy, my recommendation is to work on training your brain to understand 3D forms and perspective. It's a serious challenge I have been wrestling with myself for years now, but this foundation in perspective basics is an important milestone before attempting anatomy. I know spheres and cones and cylinders and boxes can be boring, but they are the foundation for even greater things to come! One way to study is to practice from actual boxes around your home, or you can use a 3D program and spin the forms around to different angles. Pay attention to how the angles of the box change from different viewpoints as you draw, and draw hundreds of them or more. This practice is something that can never be done enough, even as you become more experienced as an artist. Unfortunately, I have found these exercises are not enough, especially if you are interested laying out complex, believable scenes involving organic characters like people and animals in perspective, but they are a great start. Feed that imagination with forms, and who knows how far into the stars you'll reach!