Sorry for the bad picture quality

I have a pretty philosophical question. I've been keeping up with the assignments. And i know proko has spoken on length about how the lessons are not so we can draw a good (pear, seal, apple, etc) but we're practicing the fundamental of the subject, But how do we get from here, drawing seals etc, to there, drawing our figure, or face, or masterpiece. I want to be able to draw really good action poses, or beautiful scenes with people smiling looking at each other. But at times i feel insecure that me drilling the practice doesn't get me closer to my goal. I assume it comes with applying the principle to other things. But then when i draw something for me, I don't accomplish anything near what i want to do. Sorry, this message just comes from a place of discouragement as I am not trying to not compare my self to other artists that started at the same time as me, but appear to be making tons more progress then me, but without this amazing course. As an artist my greatest weakness my whole life is fighting the feelings of insecurity that come along with feeling i'm not good enough or that I will never be good enough to be a masterful artist. Unlike something like a physical sport like baseball, i have a hard time seeing the ball being hit by the bat as progress when it comes to art.

An interesting attempt but do rewatch some of the critique videos and take a good look at other peoples drawings and comments. Try and make a scale of 5 values, with white the paper being the lightest and your black the darkest. Try and do only 3 in between and do not begin too early with details. First add the big shapes and add the middle tone. Then in the middle tone add darker values ... In the whiter areas add softly the lightest grey...

Light and shadow L1 i tried to add variety of lines by making lines taper from thick to thin as they travel from dark to light.

Two seals from fantasy

Caution: drawing seals is addictive! ;) I started off doing the sketches in pencil but then changed to procreate - easier to quickly iterate on shapes and the image quality is better for uploading. The seals were lending themselves to "C" and "S" curves but I tried to use the "I" whenever possible too. I think I managed OK at getting the shapes interesting and asymmetrical. But are they dynamic?

Gestures were the nail in my coffin the last time I tried a Proko course (figure drawing) years ago. I burned through 300+ pages of newsprint with of 10s/30s/2m figure gestures drawing....and nothing felt like it stuck. I just couldn't connect gesture to structure and, since I don't like moving on if I can't at least understand why I'm doing something, my enthusiasm dried up and stopped following the course. I was looking SO forward to the rematch. Sadly, this dropped on what could have been the worst work week I have had in over a year, so my efforts were subpar. Given I only got about 20 minutes to draw at the end of some VERY long days. So details and proportions were sacrificed so that I could focus on trying to creating interesting shapes. Keep that in mind when you pull out the pencil to measure :)

Indeed, drawing seals and sea lions is very addictive. It is very nice with references, but also good for the warming up doodles. I was taking notes and decided to do some seals while watching the gesture video with the koi fish... I used colours to distinguish a bit with the phases: red for the action line or motion or flow.... But I am not very used to using more than one gesture line... I tried to make the shapes interesting so with some I was more inspired by the reference than trying to copy it exactly. Some I did twice. Some I used blue to correct but not always for the better. It was a fun exercise and I tried some without references. I also rewatched the gesture from the figure drawing fundamentals afterwards.

Not off topic I think - but while waiting for this assignment I worked on this. Would love to be able to draw walking, trotting and galloping horses out of my head. Think these lines help a lot.

2023/7/26. Good morning everybody. This is an acrylic painting I've just finished this morning (it took me 11 hours). I'm very bad in painting landscapes. I specially struggled with the color of the river especially in the bottom area. I feel like, it's not bad but it still look very amatorial. I'm not sure if the dragon merges correctly with the background. Thanks for your critique.

If I had to draw an accurate portrait I would chose the precise guidelines. Otherwise I would make many sketches like the 3rd image (which was a first attempt) until one stands out to work on and make it more expressive.

Hello! First attempt was done on 18x24 in. newsprint. the measurement lines were very light, so they're hard to see in the picture. Second picture was done digitally. I wanted to do a few digitally so I could check proportion issues more easily. The final drawing was in a 9x12 sketchbook. I can definitely still see proportion issues (and the face features are pretty funky haha), but I can see improvement after doing the assignment

It is kind of hard to work first with shapes and than still show that in the process. I did that in a blue colerase prismacolor pencil with a photo of the drawings on the table but in rather horrible light... And in the second version went over that with a light b pencil, which I scanned. However there is still lots of gray noise on the side when I multiply it to make it more visible. I always start light when doing a portrait. Both eyeballing and measuring it. It is a long time since I did a portrait. But I regularly draw outside and measure all the time... I did my drawing slightly larger than the printed lettersize of the portrait so did not focus on the exact composition of the head on the page (I left as little as possible).

I did another portrait. Proportions were way off. Did corrections based on the previous demo. Still off. This is just going to take a lot of practice.

I think I need a lot more practice. My second try does look better than the first one, but man that nose, and all the angels in this picture makes it one of the more difficult projects I've tried so far. I cannot wait to see the critique video, to learn more and see where I can improve.

This project requires a lot of patience. I was rushing a bit and eyeballing too much, also got a bit distracted with adding details.

From left to right, are my three attempts. I struggled too much, since I get used to rely on eyeballing to measure something( It isn't precise. I use Ctrl+T to adjust my drawings in Photoshop ). Also I am troubled by "tunnel vision". So I tried to measure in the same way as Stan  taught in the lesson, using pencil to measure. BTW, I spent lots of time on each one, 3-4 hours average or more, I believe. Maybe it was perfectionism, which made me feel bad while drawing. Critiques appreciate.

Wow. It is so interesting to see and hear the critiques. I do realize that it is very very easy to just simplify and not really look at those shapes... I will need to do more of this exercise, to do it way better! It is a lot of fun and very helpful but oh so easy to not make the shape. Thanks for the critique demo. OK try to do follow through not in my head but do it... shapes shapes and more shapes!

Casually did my circles while listening to David Finch explain gesture drawing. I’m not certain if it’s wise to be studying both anatomy and the fundamentals at once, but here are my circles next to an anatomy quick sketch I did. I’ve taken figure drawing before, but I want to be able to create my own characters or accurate fan art. So, I’ve decided to come back to the basics to fill the gaps in my knowledge and not give up this time. Excited for this course, Stan! Your lessons are a source of encouragement.

I reattempted the assignment. @loes roos gave me a lot of confidence about the assignment by helping explaining what I might of not been understanding. Then after watching some of the proko Livestream I wanted to try the shapes and also pushing the shapes to make 2 different characters.