Here are my level one drawings. I was worried about this assignment, but after doing a few I felt more confident and pretty happy with the results. I started small, but tried going bigger as I worked my way through the pictures. I ended up thinking this was an interesting exercise. You can actually capture a surprising amount of the original image with only a few values.

I don’t have my T-Square and triangles yet, so this is mostly free hand experiments. I find this challenging in a fun way. It makes me want to creative more complete images with illusions, like M.C. Escher or Sandro del Prete. I’m hoping to have time to do some more.

Here is my level 1 attempts, I experimented with some different pencils, ultimately ending up with 8B, 6B, 4B, 2B and HB. It was pretty easy going one step lighter or darker, but trying to pick the right value for a middle grey was tough. It seems like the boxes look smoother in real life than in the pictures. I’m not sure if my phone is bumping the contrast.

Hello, my name is Darin and I am just starting to learn to draw. I have been taking the Drawing Basics course and this course seemed to be a good next step. My goal is pretty simple, to improve my drawing skills. I am looking for drawing to be a hobby, no plans for anything more than that. From this course in particular, I'd like to learn the "rules" of perspective that will help with rendering realistic objects in perspective. For example, I struggle a lot when drawing objects that are pointing towards the viewer with a lot of foreshortening, I always end up with object that are too stubby looking. I struggle to make the near side of the object large enough. Honestly, I am not very familiar with many artists, especially fine art and I don't really know who would be considered a "perspective master". However here are some big names whose work I like: MC Escher, Dali and H.R. Giger. As a kid I read a lot of the Dragonlance books, so I have a soft spot for Larry Elmor. I am a fan of Bill Sienkiewicz's work in the New Mutants comics. Through the Drawing Basics course I have been introduced to a few new artists, the one whose work I am constantly impressed with is Eliza Ivanova.

Hey Stan, one comment you made was suggesting that a student add cross contour lines to help indicate the shape of objects. One thing I have been struggling with is adding cross contour lines that blend into the overall image. I feel like often my cross contours lines just look like cross contour lines, they stand out as artificial looking. More experienced artists seem to be able to add lines that function as a cross contour while still blending to the image. Beside practice and experience is there a trick to adding cross contours that blend in more naturally? I first started struggling with this with the tree house assignment and trying to make the tree trunks look rounded, without looking like they just have a string tied around them.

It was really interesting to discover all the ways I could get things wrong. The parts I remember wrong, the parts I remembered looking at, but couldn't remember when I was drawing, and my personal favourite, getting to an area and realizing I didn't even look at it to being with. I think the general shapes and perspectives are mostly correct. I struggle with how much to foreshorten objects that point at or away from the viewer (see sledgehammer). I also have a habit of making things shorter or boxier than they should be (see hammer, wrench, whistle). I definitely struggled with the meat grinder clamp, I decided that the horizon line would be between the top and bottom of the clamp, but that just messed me up. However if I step back and consider how much my drawing has improved so far, I am pretty happy with these results.

Just wanted to say, I used my kneaded eraser as a drawing aid way back in the hand boxes project. It definitely helped with getting some of the fingers boxes angled correctly.

After watching the Demo I decided to try a tree house as well. Does anyone have advice on how to draw natural looking cross contours? I can draw the cross contours we practiced earlier, but when I apply them to organic objects they look unnatural. Just lines around a tree trunk. Thanks

Here are some of my attempts at the level 1 version of this project. I did a page or two over several sessions, including experimenting with using a red pencil. It is definitely a mixed bag, but I feel like I am improving. I tried a few that were supposed to be someone lying down, but I found those hard. There are also definitely a few where I break the anatomy. I also tried some inspired by actual poses, but without worrying too much about accuracy. I found that helpful in some cases because it gave me a starting point for the positions and angles of the boxes.