Here's my assignment ... Saying that I'm not happy about it is an understatement but I really struggle with simplifying haha. I want to believe that I did my best, but I'm not even sure I did.

Some animals were really easy to simplify with limited shapes, others were not. I noticed that mammals seems to need more shapes to specify the species. The Tiger I drew still looked more like a bear when I had spent my shape quota. The Rooster was very easy and I think I could have used less shapes and it still would have been understandable.

As I work, I tend to forget to keep the forms simple, but the moment I realize I’ve gone too far, I remind myself of the main idea behind the piece—that is, KISS I also keep telling myself to draw with my whole arm, starting from the shoulder, rather than just with my wrist and fingers

Another decent challenge for me, still an enjoyable one with some minor frustration. Some shapes seem obvious others I struggle to decide where one should start and another end and they become sort of blobby masses, all practice I suppose. I made some attempt at the level two assignment but quickly felt a little out of my depth. Will return to it once I have finished the rest of the section.

Help needed!! Below is a few of my assignments (sorry for the messiness). I’ve done at least a couple hundred of these at this point and feel half decent at doing them, but for the life of me I can’t seem to do frogs,lizards,or fish of any kind. I also had a particularly difficult time with the left facing koala and didn’t even post my attempt because of how hilariously bad it is. Regardless, it seems like anytime I do these difficult animals I either over or under simplify, don’t capture any likeness, or seemingly stack shapes into an almost mosaic like pattern negating any overlap. I think it has to do with the subtlety of their features and also the fact that for a lot of frogs and lizards from the side, their head’s basically consist of a top and bottom half with all of the features practically inset with few protruding parts. Can someone please use my frog,lizard and left facing koala photos and show me your approach? I feel like I’m missing something so simple yet vital but I just can’t pin it.

I might have gotten too complex. I'll watch some demos and try again!

I think I might have gone a little too detailed in places but overall I'm happy with the results from this project, definitely room for improvement though.

Here are my level 1 (first 3 photos) and level 2 (the rest) submissions. I have used shapes in life drawing before but focusing on simplifying shapes is tough! I spent more time thinking than drawing... nonetheless, this was fun!

I don’t think that I understood the exercises fully nor did I do it exactly right I think because of the sheet fact that I kind of felt like a first grader doing this. Was I supposed to build the animals I was looking at from scratch using simple shapes or simplify them to simple shapes( I did the second).

I was planning to not submit these because I'm not proud of them, but then I realized that's exactly why I needed to. Creating more fun or cute (cartoon-like) shapes that are aesthetically pleasing has always been difficult for me. Even with the improvement of my line quality, I feel like overall my searching lines still take away energy compared to good animators where their lines give their work energy. I can be pretty critical of myself, so I've been able to correct some mistakes and improve, but I've realized recently I'm really lacking external constructive criticism and ultimately mentorship. Anyways sorry for the block of text, appreciate your time and good luck on all your art journeys as well!

Felt like a little kid trying to draw. I hope the simple shapes I chose makes the animals easily identifiable. Feedback welcomed

Tried twice with this assignment, I felt like my lines came out better on the second try with the hippo image. Wish my shapes came out with a bit more 3dness to them though.

Last one im doing for this lesson! Really enjoyed it tho!

First test!

Here’s the animals I drew with the project! The limitations definitely made it challenging but I had a lot of fun with it!

Here are some attempts. i'm still not sure that I'm nailing it, but I think I'm getting better. Here are the one from the provided pictures and some that i got from Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/antelope-and-zebra-7710399/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/antelopes-with-horns-15279628/

I've been doing these off and on the last week or so. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it. Apologies for not uploading the original picture. I sit with my daughter and draw animals she wants, loosely explaining the shapes as I do so, then she gets to color them. As you can see from the Level1 drawing (from a reference photo), she started coloring before I got a clean picture of it. :) (it's also nearly impossible to find the dog I drew since it was just a quick image on a google search and searching for "dog" a week later was not really finding the image. :D ) But this was the first time that playing with the shapes for the Level2 picture felt right. It was interesting how I could nearly make a puppy from the shapes by adjusting where the eyes were and the shape of the head a bit.

Same goes for this one. Dont know if im doing the right thing haha

Really struggling with this one. Made this giraffe, feedback would be really appreciated :)