Drew these after following the advice ,envelope, palm, fingers. I find this breakdown so useful as it stops me becoming overwhelmed at the prospect of having to draw hands.

Had a go in pencil and shading took ages. Put in what I thought were the actual shapes and then joined them up to prevent as many "floaters" as possible. I thought the shadow side was too variable (picture 1) so I then went over the shadow side again in one go to darken everything more (picture 2). Difference very subtle but maybe the second is slightly more unified on the shadow side?

Carrying on with my revisit of this course. Things that I found out this time. 1) It can be quite hard to do the early stages with the skull when there is a lot of hair acting like a shroud and shadows hiding some of the forms. In addition picture three was front on which made the perspective even more difficult to judge. It went wrong so I scribbled in some tone before I gave up! 2) From this I learned that I should consider the customisation of the proportions early on. Particularly as when drawing in pencil, I can't press a magic button to reduce the opacity of the gesture lay-in! 3) Noses are difficult. Sometimes with turned up noses it's easy to think that because the underside is showing, the perspective is from below. But it isn't. BUT, approaching the size decreasing forms as perspectives makes drawing a lot less stressfull and much more enjoyable, even meditative. Always have the MH mantra in my head - "You're never really drawing the "thing"".

Revisiting this course after diverting to the gesture course and I’ve noticed that although maybe if I’m getting to the same level of drawing as the first time, I’m getting there a lot quicker and with much less stress.

Had another go at this project as another aid to the gesture course, although this is going a bit beyond gesture now.

Currently doing the gesture course and learning the shape method, so I thought I would revisit the gesture part of this course again so I can add a bit more perspective to the heads. A lot less stressful the second time but I am a bit thrown by the models looking in a different direction to their head tilts. For example when the head is facing upwards but they are looking down. I just have to forget they have a face and imagine the head as a box in perspective. Also, sometimes the faces are so close to the camera that the chin and brow are not parallel but they actually converge to the vanishing point. What should I do in those cases? Ignore the converging lines? Apologies for drawing on the back of oil painted paper.

Some more. I am realising how important line quality and confidence is to the final appearance to these gestures. Also form intersections are vital but I haven't got the hang of those yet. It's a lot to think about while also trying to learn this method.

Next 3. Would like them to flow more and I feel I'm missing the form intersections. Will need to rewatch the previous videos before I do more.

First attempts. Went very slowly, so a bit fussy.

Another couple of untimed sketches, this time with coloured pencil. As others have also said, I am really struggling with the halftones (which Stan said are important and we should spend most time on). Mine are almost anonymous and I don't feel they are adding much in my drawings.