I'm a little out of practice with the overhand grip so this was a good challenge. But I noticed my paper is very rippled. This is a problem I've noticed with all my Strathmore newsprint. I'm not sure if its caused by weather or what, but I'm going to try out another brand. Any suggestions?

The image on the right was my first attempt at dividing the light and shadow areas. As I was rendering the halftones, I lifted the shadows in a few places (especially in the beard) to simplify the value groups. 14x17" charcoal on bristol.

I'm used to drawing heads on a much smaller scale in small sketchbooks or on a digital tablet. It was very challenging to construct a head on a large scale, but I think it turned out ok. I scrapped my first attempt. I took it into photoshop to compare with the reference, and it was definitely off in places. I tried to stay disciplined in measuring everything, but I found myself relying on eyeballing quite a bit.

I like a lot of the shapes I ended up with. If I were to do this project again, I would try to explore more personality and character instead of only focusing on shape.

The Martin French drawing uses energetic lines that look like they were executed quickly with lots of dashes, corners, and noise. The Gary Villarreal lines are flowing, sweeping and subtle. It was difficult to replicate the sweeping curves of the second drawing. It felt good to break away from the usual shapes and lines my hand naturally draws when I'm sketching on my own. A great challenge.

This was a really helpful project. I learned so much and I'm definitely going to do more drawing from imagination. I had fun with this one.

Going through the lessons I missed. I'll post Level 2 drawings later!