Project - Simplify from Observation
Project - Simplify from Observation
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Project - Simplify from Observation
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Vance Viggiano
When you can't decide on Level 1 or Level 2. I thought it might be fun to try it on gray paper. Everyone's work is inspiring! Happy to be learning with you all!
LESSON NOTES

Alright guys, let's jump into the deep end and see how you do! I feel like we've been talking a lot and not drawing enough. So, before we move on to learning about Lines, I want to give you an opportunity to spend some time doing a simplified drawing. You’re going to draw a pear or portrait if you’re doing the level 2 project. I know… A fruit isn’t the most exciting thing to draw, but it’s going to allow you to focus on the process I’m going to show you, instead of being distracted by a difficult subject matter.

This will let us see where you're at with your skills. It’s totally fine if you're at zero. Kind of expected actually. But, you'll identify right away what you struggle with. And you’ll be introduced to a lot of the skills that you’ll be working on improving in this course.

You can draw from the photos I provided in the downloads tab, or find your own fruit and draw from life. Pick a fruit that has an interesting shape you like. Put the fruit on your desk and shine a light on it. Move the light around until you like the balance of light and dark shapes. 

If you don’t want to draw the photo I provided, or you want to do more than one, feel free to find your own photo. Just make sure you choose a photo with a strong single light source that creates a clear separation of lights and shadows. Many moons ago I wrote a blog post about good photo reference.

Make sure you take a photo of it from your point of view, so you can include it when posting your drawing in the community. If you want to be critiqued by me or others in the community, we'll need to see what you were drawing. 

Join us in the premium course to get access to this lesson, full lesson notes, assignments, demonstrations and critiques!

DOWNLOADS
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level-1-pear-1.jpg
2 MB
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level-1-pear-2.jpg
2 MB
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level-1-pear-3.jpg
2 MB
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level-2-portrait.jpg
1 MB
mp4
project-simplify-from-observation.mp4
183 MB
txt
project-simplify-from-observation-transcript-english.txt
5 kB
txt
project-simplify-from-observation-transcript-spanish.txt
6 kB
file
project-simplify-from-observation-captions-english.srt
9 kB
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project-simplify-from-observation-captions-spanish.srt
8 kB
ASSIGNMENTS

Use the reference photos in the downloads tab or go find your own reference and start drawing! Remember, this project is all about simplifying to clarify.

Make sure to keep these 3 things in mind:

Shapes - Draw your shapes with straight lines
Values - Use only 5 values. 2 in the shadow and 3 in the lights
Edges - Make every single edge sharp!

I'll publish my drawing demos of both levels next Tuesday so you can watch me go through the problem solving process. For a chance to be included in the critique videos, you must submit your drawing to the community by January 26th, 2023, so I can begin filming and producing the critique video.

Jens Rotter
well... here is my take...
Cesar Espinoza
Hi, it's me again! I've just finished Level 2 of the assignment. I did this drawing without watching Proko's demo first. I'm curious to see how it compares after I watch the video. Thanks, and greetings!
Rachel Witenhafer
first and foremost I have a confession: I HATE line work. I learned art through watercolor which is why I am starting with this course. Please critique(: I probably could’ve taken more time on analyzing. The second picture I made myself focus on straighter lines and more defined edges.
Charlotte Graham
Hello! I'm someone who has been drawing for a while now, but I have never really studied the fundamentals in depth. My passion is portraiture so I had a lot of fun simplifying the face reference. I did, however, find it difficult to stick to five values and straight lines, especially with the pear drawing. Admittedly, I had to redraw the pear several times because I kept falling into the trap of detailed shading. I'm still not too happy with it, but I figure it's best to move on rather than get stuck in a loop of perfectionism. I might revisit this exercise later on. Feedback welcome :)
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Really well done Charlotte. You did a great job of capturing the essence in both while still sticking to strong shape decisions. As far as criticism, I don't have much, but I do think you could go a fuzz darker with the darker values on the pair. There should be a fairly large jump between your values in shadow, and the values in half-tone/light. This will help pop out the form. But again, really nice work!
Rachel Witenhafer
i know this is not criticism but I love the portrait. The only criticism I have is for the pair, your highlights have a very clear border around them.
@acaporrini
Just started the course and never draw anything before, lot to learn but also lot of fun
Martha Muniz
Welcome to the course and great start! You got down a good breakdown of the values and have pretty consistent shading within each group, so nice job! I would recommend practicing using lighter pressure when shading in the lightest grey value. It can help to use more of the side of the pencil tip to get a softer/lighter effect, so give it a try and let me know if you have any questions :)
Cesar Espinoza
Hi! Here are my two attempts at the pear. The first one is the one I did entirely on my own, and the second one is after learning from my mistakes. I'm really happy with this course because I honestly feel like I'm actually learning something.
Martha Muniz
Great improvement and great job self-assessing, too! That's a trait of a greater learner and a great artist, so keep up the good work :)
Larry
1d
I like your attitude. I agree your 2nd drawing is much better than your 1st; that’s progress! I’m also enjoying the course and on 29/185. Keep drawing and follow the process. I look forward to seeing more post. I like that you captured the planes and values. keep Drawing
Destiny Daniel
I ended up doing both levels to see where I stood and I’m quite proud of them! The pear a little more than the portrait - some of my proportions seem a bit off.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Nicely done. You did a good job of finding shapes, which is the important part of the exercise. You also did a good job of drawing what you were actually seeing, and not what you think you're seeing. The proportions and face anatomy will come in time! Keep at it.
@mosesproko
Hello, here is my submission of my work using a different fruit, my main struggles were finding the planes, contour lines and establishing/identifying the dark halftone
@mosesproko
Upon further evaluation im quite sure there’s a lot more im missing, feedback would be much appreciated!
@hundredd
Here are my works in chronological order. The last pear and second portrait were made after watching the demos. I tried starting with a gray background at some point but it feels like it restrained me too much on which halftone values I could use so I went back to a white background. Critiques are more than welcome!
Vassilis Capsis
I think that I can already see a difference!!! lol. Whenever I was asked to draw something, the little house was my favorite one.
Martha Muniz
Nice! Thinking about 3D objects, like a house or a pear, and how to translate that into a 2D space (a piece of paper) can be a different way of thinking, but this course will teach you all about that. By focusing on breaking the pear's image down into value shapes, it's a way to capture the dimensionality of the image onto your own page, so you're off to a great start! I would just recommend including the dark area of separation between light/shadow in the middle of the pear as a value shape itself, rather than only a line. Using a line to divide them can make it look more flat, but making it into a shape makes it feel like it's part of the pear's surface, and helps keep the illusion of dimensionality. Keep up the good work and let me know if you have any questions :)
@theofficialgio
Hi, please critique my drawing. Thank you in advance.
@scastroverde
Trying to learn how to draw digitally. Still need to get better with values, but overall like using a toned paper.
Ben Kraske
For this project, I'd recommend being sure the edges between values are clean, as it's a bit blurred, especially between the dark and light shadows. You got the shape of the pear and the overall shape of the different areas of value down really well. Nice work!
Turbo Fish
Thought I might give lvl2 a try. Had to remake proportions and values multiple times, the whole thing took me about 2 hours. After it`s done, proportion mistakes become obvious, but I still think it turned out ok given my level :)
Ben Kraske
Nice stuff! Adding a lighter shadow tone to the hair where the light hits it like in the reference photo could give it some more dimension. Overall great work with the sharp edges between values!
Noah Denney
I see the appeal of having a set of different pencils, so I grabbed a set from prime day. This is pear 2, Definitely needed to define the edges more, outside of the highlight I felt like a lot of it was more guessing and observation. Plan to watch the demo and attempt this again!
Martha Muniz
Good start! Try going a bit darker on the shadow side overall--I think simply darkening your 2nd darkest value in the area left of your darkest shadow will help unify the shadow area. Keep it going, you got this :)
Nick Grey
Was fighting my pencils a lot, couldn't figure out yet how to make edges clean. Also don't understand where is the contour dark shadow comes from and why is it visible. Also on the second pear not sure about the core shadow. Values in the shadow on the pear look close to my eye
@lhd
5d
My first attempt at pear number one. I found it hard to get five values out of my pencil and I feel like the darkest light value and the lightest shadow value are a bit too close. Sticking to straight lines was also challenging.
@lhd
3d
I did a third version using ink which is what I usually use for drawing
Martha Muniz
Nice! It's great that you're self-assessing already, and it was a good observation you made that shows you're training your eye already. Try going even lighter with your first grey value. That will help give your middle values more room so they're not so similar. I do notice a bit of grain from the paper -- perhaps it could be caused by utilizing too small of a space on the page? If that's the case, that may also lead to utilizing too much graphite and hence going a tad too dark. Try using a larger space if possible and going softer with your pencil pressure -- see if using more of the side of the pencil tip helps too.
Dante
5d
Having a bit of trouble with the lighter values but overall I feel fine with how this turned out.
Jose Ocampo
Couldn't help but soften the edges hahaha! First drawing... Not sure what to think... I guess it doesn't look too bad for my first try?
Ash
4d
This looks awesome Jose! Try the advanced lessons too. I love the shading on this
Kim Solon
This is my fourth attempt. It's harder than it look, but I can see the purpose of this.
Melanie Scearce
It is definitely a difficult project! You did great though. I like that you included the background in the value simplification. The one note I have is about the reflected light shape towards the bottom of the... pear? Orange? Idk It feels a bit too light. I used a blur filter on your drawing to simulate viewing the image through squinted eyes to compare to the reference. While it is lighter than the surrounding shadow shapes, it's not quite as light at the portion of the fruit that is directly lit, so I would darken it a bit and arrange the surrounding shapes to accommodate that change. A large jump between values can suggest a corner or edge, which makes the fruit feel like it has an indentation in it instead of it being rounded. I hope you find this helpful, you did fabulously with this project 👏
@atlas_gladwyn
Realizing after having taken the photos that I could/should have gone much darker with my shading. To make myself feel better I'm gonna chalk that up to my not ideal pencil. I'm gonna retry again later this week to see if I can do better.
Martha Muniz
Good start and good self-assessment! Try seeing if going back with another layer of shading helps darken the shadow areas, as well as utilizing more pressure when shading. Otherwise, using a softer pencil like a 2B or 4B will definitely help. But you have a nice division of light and shadow areas, so nice work!
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