I did a mango but I don’t get the shadowing part

I'm using toned paper, so I tried playing around with a white color pencil for the highlights. This was fun, I'll definitely practice this same project with different fruits. Thanks!

This is my second pear after I watched the demo and the critique videos! The values were easier now that I used two different pens (I think it was HB and 2B)

Here's an attempt at the portrait. I had it mostly finished more than a month ago but kept fiddling with it😅. This was a really fun exercise overall!

Gave it a shot. Really struggle with line control, so I'm excited to practice more. Some of the sloppiness is because I started to add more detail lines but then decided against it, but I drew the lines too dark to erase fully :(

Hi all, here's my attempt at pear #2. Biggest lesson learned? Plan the whole drawing before getting detailed! Hopefully the shadow falling behind the value chart isn't too distracting. I'm not sure I spaced the values evenly enough, and a less textured paper might've made things easier. Picking out the difference between the two shadow values was a challenge. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes a look!

This is my first attempt. I hope we can submit multiple tries. I found it hard to get the separation of tones, with a #2 pencil, only. next time I will try multiple hardnesses, as mentioned. I know I fell on my face with the shadow.

Went with Pear 3 and tried to keep every edge sharp. Here's my self critique. Shape: I feel like I did okay here. My overall pear shape is a bit more upright, but it's not the worst thing in the world. My shadow shapes within the pear are rough but I was focused on simplifying as much as possible. Values: I definitely think this is the weakest part of the sketch. I feel like the biggest problem with this drawing is the value range. Going with white charcoal for the highlights was probably a bit too much. I also had problems erasing white charcoal once it was on the paper so this made me commit to areas that I later wanted to adjust. Will keep that in mind for future projects. Edges: I don't have too much to say here. I feel like I kept all my edges sharp. The only area that I could have sharpened was the cast shadow. If you see anything I could improve on please leave a comment. I'm starting from level 1 here so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

This took me a while! Tried doing it on toned paper to spice it up a little. Would love to hear critiques. Some things I think I struggled with: - How to do core shadows I know I'm "supposed" to put in core shadows, so I did, but I can't really see them in the reference image, so I'm not sure how to do them correctly. I kind of just traced the dark area with an even darker area and crossed my fingers! - Choosing shapes in the halftones I think the hardest part of the project for me was choosing where to draw the lines between the light and dark halftones. I think if I were to give this project another shot, I would try to be more intentional about choosing shapes that accentuate the structure of the object. I kind of just went with my best guess from observation here. - Clean shading Every time I thought I was done shading, I would take a step back and notice all these patchy spots and conspicuous lines. I'd carefully go over the offending areas again, but the issue would just move somewhere else! I think I ended up in a place I'm okay with, but I think I got lazy towards the end, especially in the background. I definitely need to practice shading large areas smoothly. Another question I had was about the highlights. Are they too white here? Can highlights even be too white? For some reason they look a little out of place to me, but maybe it's the just the shape and size that are the issue.