To be honest, I had to first pick up a few simpler animals (more primitive ones) to even start "seeing" the shapes (pictures included). Then I did the assignment. It was very insightful.

Birds are easier, all-round and fluffy :D

This one was cool. Simplifying shapes is definitely something I don't have a lot of experience with.

So here's my attempt to make this project/exercise. I feel like I'm not getting the line control too well, but at least I liked how things turned out. If there's anything that I can do to correct myself, I would love to hear your critique. Thanks for reading this post

I ended up doing a lot haha. Mostly level 1 but some level 2. I didn’t have enough space here for all my references. But I had fun. Was a good lesson! (Probably went over 10 shapes at times and failed to fully simplify in all of them it was for sure hard to hold back)

Here are my level 1 attempts at the chicken and hippo. For the rhino I think the best ones are a, d, and f. For the chicken I think the better ones are b, g, and h. I think overall I did a better job with the hippo, for the chicken though I'm unsure if the shapes are simple enough. I'd appreciate any pointers or thoughts before trying more animals :)

Here are my attempts at the first 3 animal portraits.

Here is my level 1 attempt. I tried to keep the shapes simple and hope I at least captured the essence of the lesson

Mixed results for this one. Some I am very happy with. I definitely learned as a I went. I think I would benefit with a bit more observe-and-plan before putting pencil to paper. All feedback welcome

I had a hard time understanding the big bulk that is on the back of the gorilla, and I guess is hair? But let me know what you think. And I think I overcomplicated the Lv. 1 portraits. Feels like I didn't played enough with the shapes, what do you think?

This was hard, but fun! I tried each animal a few times until I thought they were good enough. I'm proud of the rooster!

This assignment was great because it forced me to look at the subjects in a different way than I typically would. It was a tad difficult at the start, but applying the knowledge from the previous lesson helped steer me in the right direction.

Went ahead and did this one twice. Had A LOT of fun with it. Breaking things down into simple shapes was hard at first, especially with the animals that weren't looking directly at the camera or were a side profile. Took me a bit to figure out a good way to take the perspective into account with the shapes. My First attempt I had the images on the canvas as I drew and found it to be a bit distracting. I think I was trying to hard to match proportions and exact placement of things. I also had to draw things a little smaller which didn't help. On my second go, each page was dedicated to a single animal and I think I did WAY better! I plan to incorporate this as something to do just after my warmups since it's a lot of fun trying to figure out what shapes work and I think I still need a lot of work/practice to nail some of the harder animals/shapes. Had a blast, and excited to do more!