Hi! Something that can help with accuracy in placement is to align elements with vertical/horizontal line measurements on your reference. E.g. the green line reveals that the tip of the hat, start of the nose bridge, and tip of the beard all align on the vertical. This can help you assess where to place key elements or correct as you go along your drawing. Hope this helps :)

Hey I’m doing great! I just got back from vacation a couple days ago and haven’t done much drawing the last couple weeks. I thought I would have more time to draw, but I just wanted to enjoy the time I had with my family. I did some sketches here and there, but nothing worth posting. Thank you for checking in though! It really means a lot! Hope you’re doing well too!

You need to follow what you are learning in the drawing fundamentals class, and use simple shapes. You are trying too hard to draw hands, instead, draw simple shapes, it's so much easier.

I haven't gone through the course, so I don't know the assignment, but the biggest thing I'd say is to look for the big 2d shapes. Try to picture the subject as a very simple shape, instead of trying to draw the complexity. This allows you to establish basic proportions, such as the legs, which on yours have gotten very wide. This happens because there is so much detail, and we start focusing on the curves of each leg instead of the overall shape of the four legs as a whole. It's tricky in perspective, where the body is foreshortened. You can see I did the same mistake on my version, where I made the back legs a bit too far away, as if we're looking at the subject more from the side.

Yeah, awesome!!!👏👏👏I think this is the best drawing I've seen you do so far! I hope the accuracy tips helped :) - You tend to make proportions too wide, same thing in the portraits you've posted previously, so keep an extra eye on that. - Try to think more about volumes in your next drawing (this will be talked about further down the course, so I might be getting ahead of myself XD). When you're drawing, think like you're building a sculpture; the shell is a ball of clay, the core of the body a cylindrical clay sausage, and the wider part of the body a flattened piece of clay. This might help three dimensional thinking. Keep it up! 😎

The reason you cant see values in the light is because this is flat lighting...there are no values. You need to find reference that has one light source, preferably 3/4, from the top.

One suggestion I have is to separate your values a bit more. Right now it seems like you're trying to blend them, but for this exercise you really want to make them more distinct.

Hi @Cade Burdett, sure no problem👍 The shading looks pretty good to me. Great job keeping the values in the light clean and subtle. - Notice how you've made parts of the cast shadow as light as the dark halftones. You probably don't want that. This confuses the separation of light and shadow. You often want the separation of light and shadow to be clear. Keep this rule of thumb in mind: 'The lightest shadow value should be darker than the darkest value in light' - I have some ideas for specific exercises that could help you practice values: • You could do a value scale, as explained at the bottom of this reply https://www.proko.com/s/xjxH. Use a single pencil when doing the scale, not switching to harder pencils when doing the lighter swatches. That way you get to practice pressure control. Choose a soft one, 8B for example, so that you have a wide range. • You could do value studies. How to Organize Values (you can get the video for free in the Proko Course Sampler). I would start with 2-value studies, then move to 3, then to 4 and 5. The linked reply above has some more tips. But I don't think that that's where I would recommend spending your energy at the moment. Stan will talk more about values in a later lesson, and the tones in your drawings look pretty good already. Instead focus your effort on improving the drawing beneath the tone. The drawing aspect I would focus on specifcally at the moment is proportion. Choose some subjects that you like or find interesting and draw them, without shading. Focus on getting the right proportions. You could take the drawings as far as you'd like, but you might get the most out of doing a few starts, capturing the proportions of the major shapes, and get feedback on those rather than one finished drawing. You could use the process suggested here as inspiration: https://www.proko.com/s/mSNo. Work from big to small. I attached a few slides below with notes on your pear drawing. I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Hello! I can give you one critique here on the strawberries that I think will help you quite a lot in the future if you keep a close eye to it, which is to really take a good look at the angles. Try to be as close as you possibly can, like for example, try thinking "the right of the right strawberry has a clean vertical angle, which connects to a 45º angle to the top. That side is 1/3 the length of the right side". If you start to take account of the angle and length of each side, you'll be able to start drawing much more accurately. Try doing these exercises occasionally without shading, just to get a better feel of angles. When you finish your attempt, try to overlay the photo you took with the reference, and see where you went wrong. With that knowledge, try again, to do the same picture, correcting what you noticed when you overlayed the images. That will make you more deliberate in trying to be as close as possible, and if you take that mindset with you to the future, you'll make a lot of progress! It might take a few weeks of deliberate practice, but you will improve! Don't be discouraged with posts from other people, just compare your current state with the state that you were a few weeks back :)

Hi @Cade Burdett, keep up the good work💪😎👍 It might be interesting for you to start thinking about what your goals are. That has really helped me make my studies more focused. I was suggested to make a slide with 2-4 pieces of art that represented the type of work I wanted to create. Not just any work that I like, but specifically the type of work that I wanted to create. If you do a slide like that, feel free to share it :) As part of your practice it could be great to copy artwork that you like. You'll learn a lot of stuff doing that. I hope this helps :)

This is great to see! Always make sure to draw from imagination, even if they don’t turn out anywhere near what you wanted. If for example you wanted to draw an awesome city. Then draw cities. The only way to get good at that is to just draw it. I learned this the hard way so don’t be me!

Hi @Cade Burdett, I don't know if there is an ideal study schedule. The important thing is that you take the time to practice. To make that happen, having a schedule could be useful, though. But don't worry too much about finding the "ideal schedule". If you put down the time to practice focused, if you get good feedback and if you apply that feedback, you'll improve 😎👍. If you spend more time practicing you'll probably improve faster. How much you want to practice depends on your goals and how skilled you're aiming at becoming. I would try to make drawing practice a regular thing, so that it becomes a habit. That will make it easier to start practicing. You could pick an amount of time that you think you'll be able to commit to drawing every day. Choose something that feels managable. Eventually you can push that time to be longer and longer. You're building stamina. I hope this helps :)

Nice, is this charcoal?