This has been my favorite exercise so far even though it has been super difficult. Looking at them I would have thought Frazetta would be easier than the de la Torre but that was not the case.

This was super difficult but also feels like a great way to learn. The original is by @penrod_banks

First drawing is by Aaron Blaise, I chose this drawing because it feels like this characters are alive, so many motion in it. Second one is by Freddie Carrasco, his way of styling lines is like opposite to what we are learning here, lines are scratchy, short, and wobbling but it’s look so cool:) Third one is by Joey D. (I found him on instagram, his nick - @joeyd76), I just adore his style, before our lessons I didn’t understand, how he organised his lines, but now I know about “csi” and it helps a lot!

I'm going to try again with a lighter printouts. All my lines are the same value just varying thickness because I had to be dark to cover the printed lines.

I tried drawing the penguin the same size as it is on my computer screen and then held it up to the screen and traced the areas where I was way off with red pen. The first time I was too fat and too tall, the second skinnier but still tall and the third one half way decent. I still need to improve my line quality but I found this a helpful exercise

I really struggled with the thumb on this one. I'm afraid I lost track of what I was doing with line quality.

Level 1, 2nd time through. I’m still having trouble not leaving enough room on the page.

My first attempt at the penguin.

I started out trying to only make long flowing C and S curves but then my proportions seemed off and I got real sketchy trying to fix them.

I was fairly pleased with how the boots went even though they don't match each other proportionally. I think I will also try to simply further next time

Ended up simplifying the laces to a single C or S with a C eyelet. Like the rhythm that can come from those lines. Kept the snail shell hard with straight I lines and let the snail take the organic S and C.

Started by drawing the outside of the cube and filled in the smaller ones which led to some inconsistent sizes.

Definitely excited for this assignment, can I practice doing some fire flowers and Yoshi eggs too? Those have simple ellipses. Even the Koopas have some great elliptical forms. I'm still gunna go back to my previous level 2 assignment and simplify it once more, wanna give it one more shot again.

Okay this is hard. I can't seem to control the pressure of the pencil at the right side of the ellipse. They either turn out way too light and barely visible on the page or generally messy.

These Mario mushrooms are going to take a lot of practice. It's a great exercise. Don't mind the pear.

Here’s my drawings before and after the demonstration. Any tips on how to keep my pencil marks visible and organized all the way through like in the demo would be greatly appreciated. I also found it very hard to stay light enough with the HB to keep the midtones distinct from each other and to keep the dark midtone distinct from the shadows.

I felt impatient with the light tones and got messy but overall an improvement from last week.

My third or fourth pear attempt 😅 The value chart really helped me because I struggled with my values looking too similar. I can’t seem to get clean lines like Stan does when I shade despite sharpening my pencil and just using the tip. I think maybe I need to find some line exercises to improve my line quality?

I was thinking I wasn't going to post this one but that pep talk at the end got me.

Simplify is not simple, for sure! Proko pear jpeg. Thanks! What a mess 🤪,