I am getting better feel of charcoal. Slowly. Here’s some starts I got carried away with rendering. I’m loving this course!

Lots to break down here but all quality stuff, here’s my take on this lesson thanks for looking :)

Honestly, I found this lesson a little confusing... maybe I was tired. My problem is that I find hard to follow what he is doing when I don't know what he is doing (because he talks about other things). In particular, when drawing the eye, I started copying and only halfway I discovered that it was the eye from above. So I went back and restarted. Same with many anatomical details that he discusses while he is drawing another thing. So I stop drawing, understand the anatomy, than go back to finally draw along. A lot of back and forth... Also, as he talks about jewelry, he has the complete drawing of the enchantress. I didn't know if I was meant to only listen or draw along. but I saw that the next part was drawing the enchantress, so I tought to draw her and then come back for the part with the jewels. But the lesson ends before finishing the drawing. I was sooo baffled XD I will need to restudy this lesson again for sure. Any feedback is welcome as always.

Followed along in pencil on sketchbook paper

With this one I found it helpful to do a quick study for the face, went through some difficulties but I am happy with how it turned out. Some much information on your videos, thank you :)

Follow-along of the last 30 minutes

Hi @Patrick Jones, I am in the middle of studying shading, but I am still following your course and more particularly the video 'A world of enchantment', and I did the attached drawings - the vast majority of them from reference photos. I am struggling with drawing features of the face on a full figure, especially from difficult angles and when the head is fairly small. Has it ever been a struggle to you? How did you go about drawing them better? Thanking you in anticipation, Best, Romain

In a flow of all these guidelines i created these sketches.

After watching this video, I bought and read "Figures From Life" and "The Anatomy of Style". Then I tried applying what I learnt in a figure drawing from photo reference, attempting to keep everything gestural. I used mostly graphite to draw, and charcoal at the end to add contrast and make the figure pop up more. I'm not used to anything else than the classical HB drawing pencil, so I feared for the worst. But it seriously came out better than expected. There are still plenty of areas I'm not satisfied with in this drawing, but overall, I'm proud because I know I was unable to produce something this stylish on paper before. It feels good to see progress. This course has already helped me a lot more than I thought it would. I'm sorry for the head cut btw : my scanner is too small for this drawing.