Nice study! There's a lot going on and a ton to balance in this Kojima piece, the dry brushing alone is a masterclass! Squinting down while studying the reference can help you see where your values are a little light, and where you can push further into black, but this is a great start! You could start to work up layers on top of this to push it even further. A layer of dry brush in the darker areas will really push elements into the background. The trees you have in the bottom right foreground are working wonderfully, they're really starting to show some depth into the forest. The mountain side of dark tree tops in the middle ground could be pushed a bit further into black. A medium tip brush pen like the Pentel XFP5M can give you a really nice split end dry brush effect if you let the reservoir run low while you're inking. In David Finch's Comic Page Course he covers how to shadow in trees and organic elements which I think could help you here! https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/page-2-line-weight-shadows-and-backgrounds/discussions Hope this helps, keep up the good work!

These are beautiful, great work!

You're doing a good job! The directions of the lines is important. Generally you want to direct your lines in a way that follows and accentuates the form of whatever it is you're drawing. Think about your lines wrapping around the form like a rubber band. You've done a good job of accentuating the form by shading around the pear. As for the consistency in your shading, that will come with time and practice, its really challenging to balance pressure for an even tone, but you're starting to get the hang of it. It looks like you could apply another layer of tone on top of each value to even things out. Take another pass filling in each value so each shape is as clean and consistent as you can make it, but try keep the values you have established. Take a look at the demo for the Pear Project, Stan covers how to layer up each value so it's clean and consistent. Keep up the good work!

These look awesome! Great work!

Very nice!!

Hey Robert! 0.5mm is a great all around choice for a mechanical pencil, but you might find it limited in the variety of marks you can make with it. The wider the diameter of lead, the more variety of line you can achieve, for instance a 0.9mm mechanical pencil is wide enough to maintain a chisel edge for shading, or creating thick to thin dynamic lines, but its still a fairly thin consistent line. Theres mostly artist preference between a 0.5 and 0.7mm, but there's a noticeable jump from 0.5 to 0.9mm and up. I'm a big fan of 2mm clutch mechanical pencils to go along with a 0.5mm. It can give you a huge variety of line in one lead size. A 2mm lead is really close to the diameter of a standard woodcase pencil so you get a very close feel to a traditional pencil, you can bevel the edges on a sanding block to get a tapered point which is great for shading. The reverse end of the lead can also be sharpened in a different way to give you some options like a rounded/blunt tip for quick sketching, or sanded to a chisel point to get even more variety in the line. You can switch sides depending on what kind of line you need and only carry one pencil. Hope this helps!

Beautiful work!

Hey Blanche! It's not a requirement, but the Figure Drawing Fundamentals course is a great companion course to Anatomy! If you're already comfortable drawing figures and just want to learn more about anatomy you can jump right in, but if you are just starting to learn about how to draw figures definitely check out Figure Drawing Fundamentals course, once you learn the fundamentals, you'll be able to get a lot more out of the Anatomy course. Hope this helps!

Beautiful gestures! It's good get some distance from a subject and come back to it with new skills, and fresh eyes. Keep it up!

Really nice work!

These are excellent, really beautiful work!

Really nice work!!

Nice! I love the stylization, great shapes. Balancing the value range is tricky, but you're on the right track with your self critique. Something that helped me with this was Dorian Iten's explanation of Inclination & Brightness. Check out this shading lesson from Dorian, hope it helps! Keep it up! https://www.proko.com/lesson/mind-blowing-realistic-shading-tricks/assignments

Nice work! These look great!

Really awesome work! I love this series, great study. You did a great job balancing the atmospheric depth by varying your line weight. Keep it up!!

Overhand grip gives you a wider variation of line, it's worth putting the mileage into learning how to get comfortable with it. It's going to feel weird for a while, but if you stick with it even for a few minutes each day you'll get much more comfortable with it over time. The angle of the surface you're drawing on will definitely change how each grip feels, so you need to experiment with what angles work best for you. I'd recommend not drawing on a flat surface. Introducing an incline your drawing surface will help you with both overhand and tripod pencil grips. A few hardcover books under the back edge of your sketch book will help get it closer to a proper viewing angle, or using a drawing board and resting it against a table edge on your knees so you can see your picture while drawing. It doesn't have to be 90 degrees upright like a painting easel, but any inclination is better than drawing on a flat surface. Drawing on a flat surface messes with your perspective of the drawing surface and leads to stretched proportions, as well as potential neck and back issues from craning your neck over a flat surface. A slight incline will give you a better view of the drawing surface, and open up your range of movement in the shoulder so you can make longer smoother gestural lines. Most people switch between these grips a lot while drawing a piece so don't feel like you need to commit to using one or the other the whole time, but with practice you'll start to instinctively know when to use each grip. Hope this helps!