I already see a difference because I used straight lines from the start. I don't know if it's a good habit, but I used different marks to represent the hair, as I knew the contour shouldn't be focused on detail at this stage. I like how you mentioned just plugging things in and checking them, as I think that is a good method for my process. It felt wrong drawing boxes at first, establishing a measurement to build everything else on, but I can tell that because the first measurement was good, everything else was better, too. I still feel like I am not getting the full benefits of this, however. Maybe it's because I am comfortable drawing fast, or it's just years of habit, but I cannot, for the life of me, get measurements without using the shadows as shapes to measure from. This hurts me because my layout relies on value too early to represent the figure, and I don't know if that is the right approach. I'll keep trying to do this and see if slowing down gets me a cleaner result. I know I can just do another linework layer on top, but it would be awesome to start a full drawing from a cleaner start.

I'm happy with this. I think I made his jaw and chin a bit too short though. I'm looking forward to learning to eyeball the proportions because this was super tedious!

I feel alright about this, as I feel like I learned a lot about my weaknesses. I had to switch on the reference overlay twice, mainly for the size of the eyes. I feel like it's extremely important to nail those, as it's often what makes or breaks a portrait. One thing I realized is that I really like to include value maps and ambient occlusion in my gesture lines. I tried to fight adding values here, but I feel that overall I have a tough time visualizing the form in 3D without some form of light and shadow. I have included my first version before using the overlay to show how important it is for me to double-check my measurements. I hope one day to nail them on the first try, and I feel like if I can get the eyes properly fitted, then I'll be much happier overall. Also I just realized that I unintentionally used curves. I really need to stop myself from using the Riley rhythms for projects like this.

Great warmup, ir doesn't matter how far you go. Circles are important.

Wow. This exercise has opened my eyes. For years, I have always struggled with simplifying forms and have suffered in every piece because of it. I thought I just couldn't draw cute things, that I couldn't do simple, cute stuff at all. I don't know why it clicked now, but I am seeing that the shapes are why others' work looks so solid and complete without rendering. It might sound dumb, but I am so happy I can finally take baby steps in the right direction.

I wanted to study three artists: Kentaro Miura, Junji Ito, and Yoji Shinkawa. For Miura, I wanted to learn line hatching and perceived texture, so I copied a panel from *Berserk*(First image). For Ito, I wanted to learn his use of value through screen tones and grays, so I recreated Kirie Goshima and tried to follow his manga values from *Uzumaki*. Finally, Shinkawa has an amazing use of shadow shapes that break contour. For these studies, I first copied an illustration he did of Venom Snake. I then used the same process in an illustration of my own using Quiet (another character from the same game). Overall, this took a lot of time, and I feel that even though it took months, it was worth it. When I first started, I made sure to collect a lot of references from each of them and tried my best to identify why I liked their work so much. It is amazing to me how, in most of the work I saw, the pieces were mainly grayscale. I hope to one day be able to create extremely strong pieces before I get to the rendering stages; that would feel so much better than what I am currently doing. In my work now, I feel like it does not feel complete unless I go full color with intricate values using light and texture.

This was fun!

This was fun! I feel like I have done this so much that I needed to spice it up some. I think I have good control built up but I know that I need to slow down more in projects to utilize it. Exercises like this help show how much you should pace yourself well. One extra thing I think that is good is writing in all caps! That has shown me over time that you can absolutely fix your bad hand writing if you have good line control.

Went for a Mantis character. I have trouble with keeping a expressive face when I jump into rendering.

I tried my best to draw a good representation of the thing I was drawing. I had a very hard time with the VR girl. My positional representation really needs work.