So, I missed the deadline and stayed up late last night, just determined to do this before watching Stan's video. Overall I'm happy but can see room for improvement - and know I'll see LOTS of room for improvement after watching Stan's version. Sigh. 😅 This was fun though, and sure makes for a better looking drawing!

Tried to highlight the rhino's mass and horn in the first image. On the second I went really heavy on the shadow side

Totally echoing Heather and Josefin - this makes me want to try it again - with everything!! Permission to play!

This was challenging But fun to draw from imagination. That is one thing that I want to be better at so its good for me to start practicing allready. Warm up loose sketch of Donkey kong and assignment sketch from imagination of my armadillo-lady-character.

I had so much fun, thank you so much for this task! The yellow drawing is from imagination

Its fascinating! Thought I knew basically what a frog looked like - but apparently not, lol. How they jump became clear as I looked at frog images (both legs extended, front legs down) but I drew them how I imagined.... The bull I paid more attention to working on line quality. Going to take some practice for sure.

This turned out to be alot of fun - and challenging too! I'm one of those who works very hard to get everything right and detailed. Sketching has never been a go-to tool. But - I learned that 1. Its fun and 2. I can generate ideas and changes easily. These sketches aren't perfect - and for the first time, I'm fine with that! Thanks Stan :-D

So much to learn here! For me the biggest take away is confident line quality, so I'm really excited to see that the next lesson demonstrates this! Thank you Stan!

My biggest problem is finding time to sit down to draw!! On my camel I just grabbed some scrap paper - and ran out of space, so I continued on another scrap... These are getting to be fun to do.

Here's the beginning of my snail. Mostly straight lines for accuracy. HB and 2B on heavier office paper.

Here are my level 1 assignments

I tried levels 1 and 2. Would love some feedback!

Well, this was harder and took more time than I expected. To get the proportions right I used a vertical line marking my center and a horizontal line under the base. I laid it in with a 2H pencil and straight lines, then when I felt confident I changed to a 2B and added curves and a bit of line weight, correcting my initial lay-in as I went. Super hard not to 'cheat' and add shading, lol. This is a great project to make me slow down and get things more accurate (although now that I see the images together I certainly see where I missed some shapes!)

BEST part? Your comments at the end about not trying for photorealism, about communicating rather than replicating. The whole critique was very valuable and I learned a great deal, took notes, and can't wait to get some drawing time again to redo the assignment. But seriously, the best part was your explanation of what we are trying to do and Why. THANKS!

I've been painting professionally for years. No one ever taught me to draw. This is fabulous and Exciting - Its taking me a minute to wrap my head around, but you make it clear and entertaining. I can't wait for the next lesson - but am practicing daily. Thank you so much Stan!

And my third attempt. After watching the demo I had a clearer idea of how to go about this. I'm looking forward to continuing to try this exercise with other subjects!

This is my most decent portrait entry to date, on which I spent a lot of time but in the end it does seem like there is some resemblance to the original. Albeit with some errors in proportions. Luckily we're just simplifying for now hehe. I decided to flip it.

First and second attempts at the portrait. I feel like I got a better likeness in the first attempt, but totally lost all my hard edges and limited values. The second time I spent less time on the likeness and focused more on the hard edge/5 value part of the lesson. Better, but its Hard, lol! Maybe a third try will get me there...

second pears - trying to keep the straight lines and values clear. More practice needed!

this took me almost 45min. I thought it was a great exercise. Keeping t escapes angular helped me not to get lost while I was concentrating on the details.