First posting for this course as I just finally feel like I’m getting the hang of this approach. I’m so used to thinking about pinch and stretch on contour and it took some time to understand the idea of using lines and the ‘formula’ just for notation and not form. Still a bit unclear to me when to close a limb shape versus leaving it open, and how to connect limbs to the torso. For example it seems to be normal for a femur to just penetrate the notation of the pelvis, but then connecting the humerus requires special rhythmic connection lines. Would appreciate any feedback on these and pointers where I’m missing the mark.

Worked through the 2-value and 3-value Notan studies. Tried a few different techniques on Procreate for shading.

Spent a couple of days drawing mannequins from each of the references. Then I chose a few to redo from memory and try changing the angle. The first one was difficult for changing the angle. Tried a number of times and finally found some success resorting back to boxes to help work out the perspective. For some reason the angle on the second came pretty easily. The third was the toughest angle to come up with. I needed to iterate this over and over slowly rotating the camera until I worked it out. Finally changed the proportions in one go and pretty satisfied with the final result. i almost skipped past this section as it seemed a bit overwhelming at first but glad I spent the time to work through it. Eager to move on now to the value lessons.

I deviated a bit from the instructions and first took some time drawing each of the eight models from reference and breaking them down into simpler parts. This helped a lot in understanding how the pieces fit together to make the whole. Not sure if this is “cheating” but I’m just much better at memorizing things when I can understand patterns and connections than random lists or shapes. I then came back to do the assignment and spent a minute studying each object as a refresh before doing games 1 and 2 from memory. The angle changes were completed from imagination on a blank canvas without referring to reference or the game 1 drawing.

My solutions for level two.

Level One gestural torsos/boxes from imagination. Not going to lie. Took me a few days of practice and watching the demo video before I got the hang of twisting and posing the boxes. This exercise was also actually completed after level two as the reference photo exercise was a lot more helpful for me to gain the intuition I needed to create a range of poses from imagination.

Level One and Two both derived partially from reference. The gesture on the castle was heavily exaggerated jtrying to use different methods on each section and curving the overall perspective. The gesture in the treehouse is much more subtle with just some gentle tapering and curves.

c3rmen’s original work on the left followed by my study. This was a lot harder than I expected, given how simple the piece is versus the Joshua Black studies that I did previously.

This assignment was challenging but fun. I felt like I was able to combine the information from a number of previous lessons and invent some dynamic three dimensional characters. Line quality continues to be a challenge for me and I’m still resorting to multiple iterations and lots of erasing to refine the lines and shapes. Some of the initial sketches were super messy to the point I was chiseling away all the incorrect searching lines with the eraser. I played with flat coloring this time which I’ve seen in some other posts. It relally makes the drawing feel much more solid and hides some of the mistakes or sloppiness in the lines. Probably not a great thing to rely on while practicing but it is rewarding to see it with color/shading.

Level 2 Cross Contours