i confess that by the end of it i was a little bit out of patience haha since I don't have many graffiti pencils i decided to use a charcoal pencil to make the darkest value, but it didn't really blended in the area that i already had used graffiti. I had some problems minimizing the textures of the pencil and trying to make it more even, but it's fine for me honestly.

From left to right these are my attempts. The very first one is before I saw the demo/critique. The second and third are after demo and critique. The second one is more of a thumbnail where I tried to be looser. My proportions are all over the place I think, I like the value shapes the most in the third one, although the value range could be wider. I think I like the overall value shape unity of the 3rd one the most, i tried to focus on the bigger picture as per the "egg" stuff Proko mentioned.

Hi, this is my second attempt at this assignment. I wanted to do it again after watching the demo. I also did a pencil version and a digital version. I think I executed much better this time around.

So this portrait was a bonus for me, as I am definitely more on the Level 1 track as far as my draftsmanship skills. But I took this as a challenge to work on my gouache skills in my sketchbook with a flat brush, so I got way in over my head! First mistake was the block-in - my proportions were off and I thought I could just fix it in the gouache stage, but the head ended up being too short regardless. Next mistake was using zinc white instead of titanium white to mix these values. I ended up learning a valuable lesson in when to use which white. Another mistake was just not mixing enough paint in the first place, so I had to remake mixtures twice or three times. I also should have keyed the painting much lighter and just mixed just touches of the lamp black into the white rather than mixing white into black. At the end, I was just overworking everything, so I just threw on highlights and called it finished. Overall, I knew this was going to be a shot in the dark, but I'm glad I got to practice gouache and working with simple blocks of color. The pear was good practice with pencil work, but since I felt like Level 2 was above my pay grade anyway, I'm glad I got some gouache practice in too!

This was before seeing your demo. I see now that I could have simplified shapes much more. I learned that I need to use a sharper pencil as I lost a lot of my straight lines due to a dull tool.

Hi here's a drawing I did yesterday and today I add some light and shadow to give a 3d look, gladly receive some feedback.

Hi! Here are my drawings of "simplify" made in the following order: 1. Pear 2. Mens portrait 3. Woman portrait 4. Raccoon :) Would be happy for some feedback on assignment 1.

I am level 1, but I wanted to try my hand at this too. I did one before watching the critique and this one is after watching the critique.

Portrait after critiques! Any advice welcome!

my first attempt at the portrait, this was based off of the ones i've seen here. i do know i need to improve my proportions and the way i shade my art, but i would gladly appreciate any extra feedback!

My final attempt on the portrait after watching the critique. I would appreciate any feedback!

This is my attempt after watching the demo. I'll try another one after watching the critique video.

I can see now how I totally missed those shadows next to the mouth on the brighter side

My portraits, before, and after watching the critique video. The first one here, that fits on the page, is the 2nd attempt.

I can definitely see my own mistakes here, disproportions with the eyebrow bridge being too far and my lines look a little messy

Second attempt

Portrait simplification I did after watching this critique video. It's a well known portrait of Audrey Hepburn so there's a good chance you've seen it before. In the end, it maybe wasn't the best choice as the lighting on her face is very soft but I think there were still some interesting shapes in there. I'm glad I watched the whole video before finishing this as the example on toned paper gave me the idea to use a white pencil for two of the values. Previously, I was using the colour of the toned paper for the lightest value which meant I had to squeeze four pencil values under the paper's value, thus it was much harder to control and get good contrast. I think using white pencil went a lot better but I definitely need some practice with it. Proportion wise, I've noticed I have the tendency to make faces too long. I tried to compensate by making the head bigger in the hair area but think I just ended up throwing off the positions of some of my shapes (such as the highlight on the ponytail). Definitely looking forward to hopefully learning some measuring techniques later in the course lol

Day 6

Ok, so before I even saw the demo video I made my first attempt. I’ve started with a (admitetly not so quick) sketch in Procreate. I used it as a reference for the shading of the pencil drawing. Right at the middle of the process I’ve noticed my proportions were all wrong, and the second image is the result of that after shading. The third drawing I made it after watching the demo video (which surprised me that Stan also did but much much faster and simpler), and took some of his solutions: I stoped looking at my sketch for reference and used more of the photo, I took much more time getting my proportions accurately, I corrected as I was drawing, and tried to make the difference of values much more noticeable. After seeing the progress made between the two, the improvement feels so good 😌

I decided to give the level 2 exercises a try. The first one is after watching the demo. The second one is after watching the level 2 critique video. Both were very challenging but I also learned a lot. Any feedback is welcome. Thank you!