Finally getting a chance to put some time into this Steve Rude master study again.

I started rendering the spheres in charcoal using Conte 2B/White on smooth newsprint, then repeated the exercise in graphite with 2H, 2B, 4B, and 8B pencils. One of my main struggles was pushing the lighter values dark enough, and keeping the gradient transition smooth and even. I tend to start light and build up slowly, but I often stop too early—so most of my spheres end up too light or high-key, even after multiple layers of rendering. Some of the transitions are patchy and uneven as well (which I can see way more when they’re viewed as small thumbnails!) For the untimed spheres, I gave myself between 45 minutes to an hour each. I didn’t change my overall approach much for the timed versions, but I noticed some differences as the time decreased. The 10-minute version felt fast, but I liked how it came out a little more stylized. Since I didn’t have time to smooth things out, the first, more gestural marks remained visible, which gave the drawing a certain energy that I actually enjoyed. In the graphite version, the reflected light came out too light, but I focused on using cross-contour marks to help reinforce the spherical form. In the 5-minute studies, I realized I spent about 50–60% of the time just getting the lay-in right and making sure the sphere looked proportional. That didn’t leave much time for rendering. Charcoal helped here—I was able to lay in darker values more quickly and shift my focus to halftones sooner. I also tried a 5-minute graphite version using a blending stump and a quicker, more gestural hatching approach. The stump helped build value faster, which gave me a bit more time to suggest cross-contours and pull out highlights with an eraser.

A study of a Chien Chung Wei demo, I really learned a lot from this one. His extreme simplification of background elements to large washes of warm and cool really struck me. I love the feeling of over exposed light seeping through the leaves. It's a fun photography trick to try to emulate. Also a quick sketch from a photo I took in Lake Tahoe a few years ago. I'm far less happy with the overall composition of that one, the bench became a tangent no matter how I tried to scoot it around. Should have played around with some thumbnails before hand, but I was mostly concerned with putting brush to paper with the short time I had to paint. On to the next ones!

I did this as a preliminary study for a class I take with Julie Pollard. 4" x 6"

Study from a painting I found on pinterest.

More mini-master studies. The first one is a study of Steve Rude and the second one is a study of Tony Couch.

Check out The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. There's a book and a DVD set you can trackdown online. https://tinyurl.com/2fj2nbtz

Hitting 1.5 years in a few days!! Here is stuff going back in time chronologically vs one of my first figures and my first very frustrated head from imagination from day 1. (embarrassing to look back on but motivational to keep going) Line quality isn’t the best due to the neuro tremor but hopefully we’ll find a way around it as confidence builds.

I forgot how satisfying it is to do these very precise drawings with all the crisp, clean lines. The actual Break Pad itself has this tiny zip tie holding everything together. When doing the orthos I just ignored that since it's not really part of the main object

Fun exercice even if the details on the hand got me distracted and the result is not there. By the third one flow was more easy to do. Warming up!