I did it! It took me a LONG time, but finally I drew a character from imagination! It took me several practice sketches and it didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, but at least I drew something without looking at a reference! Now I can finally move on and catch up.

I can already tell that I did better with simplifying the snail than I did with the shoes. I got caught up in the smaller details, such as the laces and the seams. I tried not to do the chicken scratch thing, but I did fall for it quite a bit on the shoes! I will try again once I watch Proko's demos. Also, proportions are hard!

I did the second photo of the pear! I think it came out a lot cleaner than the first two I did, but I'm now unsure about my shadow shapes... I may have overestated the darkest shadows. Midtones are hard to find, but satisfying to get them right!

Here is my first and second attempt with the pear. I struggled the most getting the proportions right, and I'm still not very convinced I got to that point. Still, I was surprised by how different the second pear looked compared to the first one. I'm not 100% sure it's better. The highlights are more noticeable on the first pear because I kept accidentally smushing the graphite around with my grip (I'm left handed!), but I'll keep practising. There are so many things I didn't catch on my first try (like the shadows on the stem and the lower right part of the pear), but I was happy I got some of the details. Thank you for the lesson!