Carry on drawing as much as I can 4 - 7 days a week. But remember that it is useless if I don’t push myself to progress. To get more involved with the community. Not get ahead of myself. I’m doing the drawing basics course and I don’t want to have to re-do it!

Simplifying animals into shapes

Tried my best but still just beginning!

Second lesson, draw some fruit. Old shading habits die hard. Was meant to keep it boxy with no smooth transitions. Hand waivered a bit.

It's been a while. I was hitting a wall and had to acknowledge my faults, so I have bought the Drawing Basics course. They cheekily give a one time discount offer on "figure drawing fundamentals" at checkout as well....so I got that haha! But anyway here's exercise number one, lines!!!

latest study. Focusing on eyes and nose at the moment, so the jaw is mostly indicative.

Don’t know about technical accuracy but I’m feeling a human connection to a lot of the eyes I have been doing

I think lacking an approach to eyes that I liked was the road block previously and now I’m back to happily drawing every night

As I stated earlier, I’m not the best learner. I keep forgetting things I learned in the past. So one of these is a trace. The other one I blocked in and then worked in the finer details. Size is a little off but I am a bit proud of it.

Still trying to intake the material reg eyes. As I replied to somebody earlier I find it hard marrying the guide to what I see in the eyes, I’m not a fast learner or good listener I’m afraid. I also seem to have trouble with mouthed and chins. It seems the chin ends up being too small or maybe my mouth is too big, but I have trouble nailing it down.

Latest sketches, not had chance to further much in the eyes department though

Recently moved onto eyes, it didn’t quite sink in so I’ll have to research some more

More!

More practice making sure I nail it before moving on

Think I made a little progress given the feedback

Hey Jake! I’m biased because I started a thread myself haha, but I think you should do it! It helps keep me accountable and encourages me to get up and start drawing. Whatever floats your boat, do it! I’m still learning myself, but I think looking for the shapes in the head might help bring your portraits into life. This looks more like you were looking just at the contour alone. It’s very hard but try to simplify it down. Good luck!

Hey Jack, To answer your question, you should look for head reference in different directions and angles, then use the Loomis method to draw the heads. You can then put your drawing over the reference to see how you did. It's a great way to check your work. Also, I would just draw the head shapes using Loomis without the features for now. If you can show the head in any position and make it look dimensional and solid than you can start adding features. I did a few examples based on your drawings to show how they should look. Notice too how loose my drawings are, yours are pretty tight which can make it hard to explore the shapes. I hope this helps :)