For level 1 I tried the three references provided and tried to simplify, for the chicken I tried two variations with the second one leaning into the triangular shapes, for the hippo I tried to show my thought process. For level 2 I picked some references of pigs and first tried out various basic 2d shapes. Ended up doing two more detailed drawings using a sort of pear shaped head, which felt the most pig-like to me. Finally did one drawing in ink and added a little bit of colour digitally. Loved the exercise!

Here's my entry. Level 2. Definitely struggled with simplifying enough. Some of these are more successful, some not-so-much. The butterfly thing got way out of hand :D But I'm trying to adopt a new mindset with art and accept failure as part of learning and developing. Shape design is definitely not easy and doing this traditionally complicates things when you aren't really certain. The red pencil I used here doesn't erase 100% so there are parts where it made quite a mess. Normally I would use a very hard pencil very lightly and erase as I go. But I wanted to try and follow the rules. I also keep running out of space. I should try and use an A3 sketchbook instead of A4. The extra references are my own photos aside from the alligator which belongs to the photo pack shot by Dustin Blaise.

For my first study I chose Terryl Whitlatch since she is by far my biggest art hero. I first stumbled upon her work in 1995 while playing the Dig with my brothers. But the 10 - year old me had no idea. It was only later once I discovered her books that I Googled her up and holy moly there it was. I remember being SO obsessed about the creatures in the game. At first glance her drawings just look really scientific but when you look closer, the drawings feel so alive. I recently watched her Draftsmen - interview where she talked about the importance of considering the character that the animal has. How they aren't just objects out there but living creatures with feelings. You can definitely see that in her work when you start looking closer. I chose a couple of her more cartoony illustrations from the book Animals Real and Imagined. I'm posting cropped scans from the book since I don't want to post full pages, obviously. There's a lot of gesture going on and she applies a lot of animation principles especially to her more cartoony work. The use of curves vs. straights is absolutely beautiful. And the details aren't there just for the sake of detail. I really liked how the little kangaroo turned out, the monkey not so much. I seem to have some problems with capturing the facial expressions.

Attempted the penguin one more time after watching the demo. Tried to be more loose. I also straightened out the angle of the head during my 1st try. I think I got it this time.

Decided NOT to be lazy after all and did a new project after watching the critique. I like my quick, gestural photo studies but with the final duck character I had some usual issues like making the head too big and I could've pulled in the chest a little bit. I usually do these edits in Photoshop if I want to create a final illustration but it would be nice to learn to not do these mistakes to begin with....

I'm being a bit lazy here but I'm going to post an old project that I did back in 2021. It was for a creature design competition and required full reference sheets etc. I usually don't download and save my references. If I do use a collection then it's saved on PureRef. I'm posting the pics in order starting from ref boards, then anatomy planning and then a failed sketch (because I think posting these is VERY important for transparency), then a new sketch, inked linework and the final illustration. I have another project at my ArtStation which I've kind of abandoned but it includes a similar project with brainstorming and composition planning: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ELwyPK

Sketching is very scary to me and i dont know why. It shouldnt be that difficult but I get anxious whenever i do it.

Here are my 3 before watching the Demos. I definitely need to work on looseness :D I can make pretty and accurate drawings but they are SOOOOO tight and it usually takes me quite a long time to perfect the cleanliness. Nothing bad in it but it does make brainstorming and drawing from imagination quite hard. I am starting to use more angular strokes here and there. I've realized that I use WAY too many curved lines and round forms when I draw. It can look good in places but if they are all you use, the drawings kind of "collapse".

Drew the snail and the came again after the demos and the critique. The camel had a better balance of straights and curves now but I still have a lot of issues with fitting my subjects on paper. Felt like doing the snail on toned paper but holy smokes this particular paper is SO dark.

Things started out pretty well with the snail and the boots (OMG) but things kind of went downhill from there :D I could see the skull was off and the hat kept throwing me more and more off but eventually I just decided to let it be.

So here is my first try. I think the shape isn’t quite there yet. The top portion is to small and to straight. Really struggled with the values and the blemishes on the pear. So I thought just don’t draw the blemishes.

So here's my portrait. As usual I got way too into this and ended up spending hours on it. This is why I never finish anything. The rightmost eye is a bit wonky as I seem to have forgotten about perspective there for a minute. But other than that I was really surprised about the result. I did grind on this one portrait course for half a year last year but it was all digital so I was surprised to see a lot of the fundamentals carry on to traditional free hand drawing. Now I do have to say that I'm not a beginner, I'm using this course to brush up on fundamentals and maybe find that missing piece of a puzzle that I haven't found yet. Drawing is still very difficult for me after years of practice. Just felt like putting that out there before anyone starts to compare. Also for anyone struggling with paper texture, I highly recommend hot press watercolor paper. Smooth cartridge papers and Bristol are very appealing due to the smoothness but they are very very harsh when it comes to pencil strokes. Watercolor paper also takes far more layers and prevents at least a tiny bit of the graphite shine. Makes scanning easier too. Edit: Added a better picture, scanner ate the first one.

I decided to do all 3 pears and now I will work on the portrait. I went full graphic-design mode. Getting the shape down wasn't too bad but having to use hard edges and using a limited amount of values was surprisingly hard. I also used smooth Bristol for the first 2 which wasn't a very good idea. The second try I tried to keep things more clean but it ended up as super bland. On the 3rd try I went for a more puzzle - like look.