Shading has scared me from the very start of my art journey. I honestly never thought I'd get this far, I also had quite a bit of fun doing it. Sadly I only noticed the assignment yesterday and only managed to do this one. A few observations from me: I leaned into the value study tool way too much and ended up having some pretty nonsensical forms. By the time I noticed it was too late to course correct but I feel like I managed to pull it off all things considered. I also forgot to use 3d forms more effectively. The tip from the video came to me really late as I was doing this. The blending stump disappointed me in that it seemed to darken areas that I had left bright. This is entirely on me I had never used one before. I guess the stump absorbs graphite and outputs depending on how much it absorbed. Next one will be better.

Here are my gestures!

Here's the first 5 from me. Truth be told I'm not quite 100% on the way I'm doing this. If anyone notices any glaring issues with the way I'm doing things, compared to Michael's method please tell me so I can work on doing it "better". I will be revisiting these and the rest as well as work towards changing the shape of some of the references.

Michael I'm sorry but I'm not quite understanding the difference between both methods. I understand the the first one focuses more on direction rather than outline, and this method uses more blocky construction to define the shape but I'm struggling to see the difference beyond one method looking smoother and the other looking more rigid/defined. Am I misunderstanding this?

Oh wow you actually do an ellipse around the sphere to set the direction of the core shadow. I'll keep this in mind for future exercises.

My shading assignment. Used the opportunity to try some different pencils, a fine liner and even a charcoal pencil although mine doesn't quite taper as neatly as Stan's. It's quite tricky, the 3B I've used is a Carand'ache Technograph and when using the side of the pencil it gets that blurry texture, yet the 2B, B and the 4H are technograph and Graphwood and the strokes stay pleasant even when I'm using the side.

Here's my lvl1 attempt. I'd like to get some feedback before I do any more as I really struggle with shading and differentiating tones. I'll definitely do more along the week. On another note how much do the materials influence this exercise? My pencil leaves some weirdly grainy marks if I use the side to shade is this a pencil issue? or a paper issue? I'm using standard printer paper and a Carand'ache Technalo 3B pencil.

Fun fact: penumbra means gloom in Spanish and twilight in Portuguese.

Thank you Michael for looking into my submissions. It's crazy how I hadn't noticed how stiff some where until you pointed it out.

Here are my drawings! 1/2