Nice job Isaiah, I think these came out great. Love the top middle one! I like the extra step you took to design the graphic break ups as well. Keep up the good work.

I suppose the general term for them would be an eraser with a pen-style body, and then just look for the finest tip you can. Pentel sells many similar ones and calls them "high polymer" erasers but I don't see many other companies using that term.

Love that you got creative with the second one- adding the geometric shapes to it is a great idea! I think with how nice and dark you have the shadows you can afford a little bit more rendering in the light. Yes, we must compress it, but having nothing there often gives a "bleached out" look that hurts the form.

Good job! I think they came out nice.

I think it's a great start! Good job. It is true that photos tend to make pencil drawings look bad, but you're right that if you push it all the way to the other side nothing will stop it from looking good. I always prefer scanning my pencil drawings, but using a diffuse window light tends to work best for me when I can't do that- it does create a gradient across the photo however and usually requires a temperature adjustment. Your phone's editing tools usually have some options to address those, though.

Same.

Nice, I think the side view and the 3/4 view schematic generally agree with each other- good job. Your shading in the shadow areas looks a bit patchy, try to go a bit slower next time and fill in gaps more evenly- this makes it easier to assess the true value of the shadow for yourself and keep value differences in the shadow area very subtle. Right now your reflected lights jump up in value too much. Don't do it as fast as I do it int he video- I need to rush to make it watchable in real time, you should go a bit slower with laying in shadow areas.

That lighting set up is indeed tricky, though it's one commonly encountered in figure drawing- a common example being un-bent legs in a standing pose when the light is mostly from above. The pocket solution is to minimize the amount of "true" light shapes as the ones at the "front" of the spear will be blocking most of the light from the ones behind them, and to get a bit off fall off as you move away from the light. By fall off I mean make each light shape slightly darker overall than the ones that are closer to the light source than it. That falloff doesn't actually happen with the sun, whose illumination is generally even, but it does with most other light sources and explains things clearly to the viewer.

Well, there's definitely no "official" answers in art, but I think of it as just how much you draw. It does mean something on its own even separated from what or how you're drawing, as it gives you ease and relaxation when you draw and an intimate knowledge of what your medium does when applied in a variety of ways. When I advise someone to "get more mileage" I mean fill multiple sketchbooks with who-cares-what just fill 'em!

It wouldn't be! But pure top light is rarely useful, it looks unnatural. See Hawaii at high noon: https://external-preview.redd.it/nouDqKHfUB0m9pc0m_QOMbBO6BzfHP0D639IyDfe-RE.jpg?auto=webp&s=d0ad73bc7aedf9032b0f218c0e8fe403fa89c5da I always imagine the light is a bit off to one side or coming from behind so that I can add cast shadows that explain the form. Cast shadows have more wiggle room than form shadows- they should be edited and invented to do a job instead of being confusingly accurate. See this clip from Stan at about 5min 50sec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo

Nice!

Absolutely! They're the same concepts I use when I do digital work.

Those big ones are tickets for workshops, not pre-recorded tutorials- that's for people who want direct feedback and contact time with me as instructor. I have recorded those as I did them and will cut them up into "best of" edit and make that available in the future as an alternative at a much lower price.

Hi Mikal! Glad you liked the course! You did a good job here I like a lot of what's going on here. I think moments like the one I circled in the attachments are good north stars for things to pursue going forward. I really like how subtle but clear the rendering is on that particular...artery?... and I like the work put into transitioning out of that main mass into the little offshoot tentacles. I pointed some arrows at a drawing that looks almost like chrome- watch out for having too many little wobbly dark shapes. If you could make the same statement with less shapes that's probably the way to go. My main "meta" note going forward is to work on your shape design more- you have some grasp on the rendering here now it's time to refine your taste for what kinds of shapes that rendering is going to get applied to. How can you beautify them from the start and be more discerning with your distribution of shapes and the variety you find amongst them?

Love this thing! Hell yeah! Awesome job.