Here's my tribute. Inking is hard with a pencil.

Here are my submissions: I really like the renaissance era and found this animal study by Andrea del Sarto which really caught my eye being the depictions of clothed monkeys. I also decided to try my hand at an anatomy study by Michelangelo. Apart from that you can see a bunch of Blooks by Loomis, just got his book and have definitely been having fun with a pencil. Donald dropped by too! Lastly there's some lips from this Stan Prokopenko. Check his online courses out, he's funny. My commentary: These are hard exercises, especially trying to learn from the old masters. Pencils are too thin to get those thicker lines they tend to use, not only that but a lot is lost when copying, I felt very awkward. I know that's not quite the point of a master study but it definitely requires a lot of practice to be able to borrow from the big boys. Loomis has no chill, his tutorials go from "make two lines on a circle and add two potatoes for the cheeks" to "here's an entire detailed head" in one step. It's interesting and makes me think on how he got to the last step though his book really feels like I'm copying everything. Shading wasn't quite on the menu but the lips are still very much a master study. Lastly Donald is a bro. His design is super easy to figure out. Compared to Mikey who uses multiple circles and ends up being quite a bit more frustrating to draw. Bugs Bunny kind of has the same issue whereas Daffy is essentially Donald with slightly less rounded features. I'd love to get me a book to properly study these, many of the Pinterest pictures are super small and it's hard to make out certain details. That's it from me.

@Stan Prokopenko Is everything OK with the course schedule? The demo was always preceded by the project. But the last assignment was the rhino, not these shoes.

Tricky subject for sure, it's very subjective.

Yeah I overdid some of my lines. Definitely crossed the wires between shading and line weight.

Hey Stan, I have to ask you mentioned Bluey a few times already. Those cartoons aren't drawn "by hand" right? the shapes seem to me like something closer to graphic design and there's a very pristine look to them. Or am I being silly?

Been busy these past days and forgot to check in if there were new assignments. lucky for me I could finish this in time, though a bit rushed. The first pic is a simple trace I did from the red outline provided, was a great way to brush up on using the digital tools. Moved on to hierarchy of importance and then light and shadow. I feel I kind of overdid it in the shadow but I just kind of felt like I should just go for it especially in the darker spots. As for the level 2 exercise, I went the easy way and just shine a light directly at the rhino's face, I'm aware that I'm not too accurate but I just went with my gut. I struggled quite a bit as I wasn't quite sure where line weight stopped and shading began. Lastly for the object I kind of scuffed that sharpener, not many smooth edges so it felt "right" to make all the lines about the same value. For digital I used Clip Studio, all lines were done using the GPen at size 30. Paper used a HB for construction and a 3B for lines. That's it from me, been a bit distant from drawing lately, hoping to get my mojo back soon. But first, sleep. Have a good one everyone.

@Stan Prokopenko Hello Stan, thank you for this lesson! I am currently doing this course digitally and I noticed you did some of these examples digitally too. Would you adjust brush size/opacity to show different line weights, or is there a good brush that’s sensitive to these settings? Thanks!

I feel like I rushed my stuff a tad too much when looking at what everyone did. At the same time I've no idea on how to make something loose and experimental and as detailed as some of these. I'll just do some more. On a side note, it's funny how we've had a few of these critiques and I can instantly recognize Clowndev's work.

Thank you Stan for dispelling some of my insecurities about always going back to the fundamentals.

Yeah! I made it. Was struggling to find interesting things to do so I decided I'd draw a Horse inspired by my previous post's. The idea quickly felt bland in my head so I though: Horilla! Gorse? Horse-Gorilla eating a carrot! Whip these pictures and get to work. Ended up doing a sitting pose which is honestly kinda bland apart from the fur, there's not much distinguishing a sitting human from a sitting gorilla. I can't wrap my head around rendering fur so I dropped that and just cleaned this one up. Drew this slightly indignated, cartoonish bull head. Someone told him he'd be milked...by a multi million dollar animation company. I'm kinda cheating here, I thought, since I'm not doing a full body sketch. Inspired by the lack of bugs I finally settled on that dynamic jumping spider. Its face was a butt until I noticed those were legs. I'm a bit saddened at not being able to render details, can't quite wrap my head around them. And round forms are absolute bullies in my opinion. All this was done in keeping with the spontaneous and playful spirit of the past exercises. I really didn't take too much time to make these, mostly since I don't know what else to put in them. It honestly took me longer to feel inspired. I used a HB pencil's broad side to sketch help lines and cleaned it up with my 0.5 mechanical pencil. I like this exercise.

Wooh made the deadline. A bit of context, the Penguin and the arm were easy breezy for me but for some reason I avoided the girl drawing as much as I could. I feel like I did a good job over all, was having a bit of trouble putting the right parts in the right places but kept with the laid back spirit of the exercise and just went with a general approach to the pose and model image. Taking the tips from the previous lesson, all of this was done in a fairly short amount of time with a pretty relaxed attitude. I really didn't pay much attention to details and where everything was meant to be. Funnily enough this resulted in some really good and accurate drawings. Except for the girl image as mentioned before. Guess we're just conditioned to want to portray human shapes accurately? I think you can see some of my guide lines under the sketches, I used a 4H pencil's broad side to sketch a few shapes and better guide myself through the exercise and then darkening the relevant lines and details with my 0.5 mechanical pencil. The only place I really felt was hard for me were the girl's left arm with the baton, and the circular sensor thingy, both of which I just had to redraw at some point. If anyone has some tips for circular shapes it'd be appreciated. Been drilling cylinders and circles for a while and doing the mushroom exercise but I feel like I'm not quite there yet with the round shapes. See you in level 2. PS: thought about going back and correct my hand's fingers so as to make them not look flat but I'm lazy and I don't wanna. PSS: Please tell me if there's anything I should do again and resubmit. I'm thinking of doing the girl though that'll depend on my schedule tomorrow and I really want to submit something for lvl 2 at the moment.

What, no FORCE? This is our staple line so learn it and the power that lies in the line! Keep driving with that line.

I love doing stuff like this, the sketchy feeling brings a lot of character to the drawing. I've been meaning to write this for a bit, but never really know how to put it. I don't mean to be rude by what I'm about to write and obviously, no one owes me anything but I still feel like I need to put this forward. I put a lot of time into art. I got into it for the first time in my life during the pandemic and I was set. I want to create comics and illustrations, they've been a big part of my life. I am in the very fortunate position of being able to afford taking some time off, won't bore you with the details. The crux is that after a few years I came back to my parents, and with their blessing I've taken the last 2 years to pursue art. Due to local policy circumstances I can't enroll into an art program, I am however enrolled into loose art courses, this semester: naked model drawing 2h, Scribbling 3h, 3d software 2h and general art 2h per week. My time in them while packed is very short and the teachers don't go too into depth. Talking to them hasn't really helped much. The rest of my time I dedicate to becoming better at art. After one year, I won't say I wasted my time, my general knowledge of how things should look, line quality and 3d notions have improved significantly, but I'm nowhere near where I though I'd be. I still struggle with quite a few things I thought would I'd be better by now, in particular, I can't seem to draw any details on anything. And lately, it's becoming harder and harder to just do anything art related. I do my drills and that's that I can't muster myself. I actually drew this horse the day before yesterday and a friend of mine that used to do art told me I've been "doing things like these for a while" and "I'm in my comfort zone". I was quite proud of my work and that pretty much deflated me. As someone with so much free time I'd like to fill my day with more meaningful practice, I've been going on a bit of a round trip of invest heavily in figure and gesture > I don't have the fundamentals down > do a lot of geometry > do 1-2-3 point perspective> practice strokes> feeling confident go back to anatomy> do some copies> do some figure> still doesn't look good> go back to fundamentals> ad nauseum at this point. I feel a bit lost to put it mildly. Apart from this course I dip into the figure drawing and I've also started poking at Steven Zapata's shading course. I'm also following Marc Brunet's 1 year plan he made on his Youtube Channel. I've no doubt that this year I'll reach some sort of expertise in the things that I want to do just by virtue of following these, but I'm treating this as my job and some days I just can't do more than the absolute bare minimum. Today was one of those days, and last week I had a few as well. I feel somewhat aimless. Lastly, this is the last year I'll be as free as I am at the moment. Next year I need to get back to work and my free time will obviously dip. I really want to pour it as much as possible in the time that I have at the moment. I'm not expecting to become a professional just like this, that would be spitting on other's hard work. But I'd like to be in a position where I can lift off from the ground confidently. If anyone can help me in maybe getting things in better order? I feel like I'm running in place. I know I am making progress, but for the free time that I have I feel like I'm wasting most of it. And I'll never have a better opportunity to really learn Art as well as now. I'm not asking the course to be sped up, far be it from me to demand anything. But I really don't know what to ask, maybe some insight? I'll probably be told that I'm burning out on Art but honestly, I feel closer to burning out on always doing the same thing, never really doing what I'd like to be doing, and if I ever dare do what I want it just looks horrible, forcing me to go back to the things I'm doing now.

Sad not to see any of my stuff this time around but I definitely did learn a few things from this critique video. If I may though. Proko you mention practicing straight lines, now I've done quite a bit of another free art program called Drawabox and that's one of the starting drills. The instructor does mention that it's fine to rotate the page around when drawing, does this apply to drawing straight lines as well? I feel like that would defeat the purpose. I ask this because I recently went back to doing this drill and there's definitely some angles where I can't draw a straight line, my arm's movement is just way too awkward for that angle.

Ok! Here's what I came up with. Been having a bit of a hard time drawing anything last week. However I've been keeping up with my drills so technically I've still been slinging graphite for close to 2h a day. Today I woke up with much renewed purpose and finally got to do this week's exercise...3 times, in a row. Yeah, I started and went with a general approach with a sketch followed by hard lines. By the time I was done I had a feeling I missed the point of the exercise. So I watched the video again and, yeah, ok, CSI, gotcha. Did the whole thing again using the broad side of the pencil and I felt like I had cheated. So I did it again, sketch, hard lines and a dose of freehanding. Each batch will be in order, it took me roughly 90-120 minutes each, maybe less? Hope that was roughly the intended speed. I had not checked any of my peer's work as I didn't want to be influenced. Boy do I love drawing, now if only I could be good at it. HB pencil and B mechanical pencil for hard lines. No digital this time around. Bonus capt. Bonehead concept art at the end. 100% OC don't steal. Also, drawing shoelaces without using the broad side of the pencil is an exercise in frustration.

Whoops, I forgot to check if there was an upload! Quick draw something! But I've already drawn a lot today. Draw something anyway! Forgot to put something under my page so the graphite became all grainy. The other pages are the daily drills from Monday to today. On a more serious tone, tomorrow I'll be posting what I usually do on a normal day of practice. I've been getting the feeling that what I've been doing hasn't been helping me grow and I'd like some feedback if possible.

Oh my, I got critique'd. Thank you very much, guess I overthought the exercise it's not easy to keep it simple is it? I've a question though. This is for Felix's multiple pear platter exercise at the 15 min mark. There's bounce light reflecting from pear to pear which Proko mentioned but still considered it to be "shadow". He then shaded the larger part of the pears in the same value including said bounce light. Is this a stylistic choice? a limitation due to our palette? or is this also part of simplifying? I'm not quite clear on this. Thank you very much for showing me what I did wrong in my exercises will definitely do it better soon!

Here's my lvl2 submission! I'm not 100% clear on the shading, as I've mentioned on my lvl1 post. Used two pencils for the shading, HB and 8B. While this isn't my first time drawing this face, it's my most successful shading attempt. I'mma keep practicing until the next class. Will probably copy Proko's a few times. On a side note 8B pencils get blunt really fast, maybe I'll just keep to using HB and 2B for now.

Here are my pears. Got straight to work before looking at anything teacher produced as I wanted to do it fresh without a set image in my mind. Used the images provided in the download section. I started with a rough sketch in both cases using the mechanical pencil for sharp, thin lines. My first pear (1st image, left) being more sharp as was previewed in the first video of the course and my second I used a more freeform, rounded style. Used the wide side of the pencil (2B) to shade the first one and the tip to shade the second (7B and 4B). I then watched the whole video and copied as best I could. Not being done, I also did two in Clip Studio. In the last year I really struggled with shading, even after completing Alphonso Dunn's "Pen and Ink Drawing" which has a fair bit of shading. One thing that bugs me is that it seems like using the broad side of the pencil is the best way t do this but whenever I do it it always comes out grainy and chaotic like in the first pear. I've half a feeling that I need to spend more time with this but at the same time I'm kind of at a loss as to what more I can do. I'm obviously open to feedback and I will be doing the portrait.