After completing the official assignment, I decided to tackle another portrait because I really wanted to understand this concept of shape simplification way more. I did not do this in 1 sitting. It took me a couple of days because I tried to do it digitally first, but I wasn’t happy with the progress. I decided to do it traditionally because the feeling of pencil on paper is just unbeatable. There a lot of things I would change and I still wanted to do to this, but I’m training myself to stop working on a drawing endlessly. I feel I could’ve pushed the values even more. There is a ton I still need to learn, and this assignment is really challenging! But I kinda feel I can move on to the next lesson…. (?) I doubt myself a lot so I’m working on that as well…. So, jumping to the next lesson isn’t easy 😮‍💨

Finally back after a long pause :') That was a good exercise. The demo definitely helped me with prioritizing just the shapes and the lines, not worrying about the details too much, at least for the snail. Boots were very challenging both times and tested my patience a great deal haha, but after working on the laces, I have started to understand what they mean by "solving the visual problem". My pre-demo attempts on top, post-demo at the bottom. Any feedback/advice is more than welcome!

That was definitely challenging and I found myself questioning the shapes and the tones every other second, so I put a time limit to complete the sketch. Very fun exercise!