Second try. Tried to start with a better cropped reference so I could use negative space around the image to check proportions... still had to correct several times. Next time will rely more on measurements relative to features in the face...

Several iterations - I'm bad at this! Will try again with another picture.

Some more animals after watching the demos... Getting the hang of iterating different exaggerations and distortions...

Some quick attempts after watching the demo, much easier once you've seen a solution!

Attempts before watching the demo, pretty difficult at first to get out of the "just draw what you see" mindset, felt like I was getting the hang of it more by the end of the 15th hippo or so

Sean Briggs

Sean Briggs... Tried to get some of the looping lines. Need a thin eraser to get the white on black lines I think...

Level 2 practice on some real world forms

One using line weight to emphasize importance, one using line weight to emphasize shadows. This was really fun!

Hard to draw from imagination! Did some quick copies of photos to get an idea of squirrel proportions, then changed the pose and tried to give it some exaggerated eyes and more humanoid hands

My attempts before the demo

Level 2 after watching Level 1 Demo

Redid some pears after watching the demo and critiques. Starting to get a better feel for clean shading with the tip of the pencil.

Pre demo, about 20 minutes for both, a bit too confident on some initial lines with bad proportions and had to erase, also got carried away and made some double-s curves and overly complicated lines that lost proportion.

Started with the pear - 8B pencil on pretty textured sketchbook paper. Self critique: proportions look OK and the shades on the pear aren't too bad, but the cast shadow and especially the lighter ring around it don't match the reference, which should have been almost entirely the darkest shadow tone. The darkest dark on the pear shouldn't have matched the cast shadow either... better to lighten that shadow one step up.

Attempt at the portrait project. I think I over-estimated the extent of the darkest shadow value, especially on the left eye. I also had trouble shading the light tones without making the direction of my pencil strokes obvious, which I think is distracting... any suggestions on improving this? Did all shading with an 8B graphite pencil.