This project has been so much harder for me. My whole life I've only ever seen contour when trying to draw so it's left me unable to invent for my self very effectively. I've been redoing this project everyday since it came out and I finally feel like I'm starting to grasp the concept.

Level 1 Shape Assignment

More difficult than I thought it would be. The light area with only 3 values is hard. Dont like the paper texture coming through. Didn't want to use a blender. I will try again on printer paper. Used 6b for both shaded regions and 2b for middle tone and hb for lightest

My first pear. Thinking and re-thinking values.

Hi guys, This is a digital materials related post. Since starting the course, I have been experimenting with the default charcoal brush set on Procreate. I have a few charcoal pencils at home, but for the sake of portability, convenience, and lack of a mess (along with a one year old baby), I found this to be the most appealing medium for now. This piece was done entirely with the 2B and 4B compressed charcoal brushes and an eraser. The lay-in/ preliminary sketch was done with the 2B compressed on roughly 50% opacity and 5-10% size, to keep the lines nice and light. Once the features were established, I realized the face was too wide so I erased it down and redrew it. Same for the mouth, which was initially placed a little low. This is something I’m always struggling with. From there I switched to the 4B brush for the rest of the piece. This was at 100% opacity and varied in size between 2-10%. Values were controlled with applied pressure with the Apple Pencil, just like an actual pencil. Generally I tried to work for large to small. And tried to simplify at first (which is also something I struggle with greatly). I started by blocking in the shadow family of the face. Then half tones and progressively refining from there. I then framed his face with a large blocked in dark area for the hair. There were several tweaks needed to get his face shape corrected. The hair was blocked in with solid medium/dark value and I then found the next biggest, darker, general shapes, progressing to medium and smaller sizes. Then it was really all eraser from there. I used a standard round brush eraser at 25% opacity. I find that this gives me the most simulated feel to an actual eraser and I can control it with my hand pressure. Same idea as before, just inverted. I found larger to medium light areas, then progressively added lighter forms and highlights. I just wanted to share. I love seeing all the various posts and mediums used and am very excited to start working on whatever assignments come next. It’s such an awesome community and I’m looking forward to learning and growing with everyone.

What did everyone else think about what Stan said about drawing scribbles on a page? Is it getting our arms or eyes used to seeing our selves drawing. Or is it suggesting that literally any form of putting pencil on paper we improve our drawing skill?

Some tool scribbles and swatches. If there's one thing I wish I had known when I first picked up some pencils, it would be to swatch out your materials in the most efficient yet fun way possible. These references are invaluable to me. It's virtually impossible to get the outside color to directly match the medium's output.

Playing with the tools... It resulted in a disaster 😅

Hello everyone :)! I drew some tools that I almost always use when I'm drawing.

Put pencil to paper to see what I could see. The beginning is always uncomfortable for me, I feel like I don’t know where to start, (one reason I decided to take this course) and when there’s only a few marks on the paper I feel like it’s not going well, every time I draw. Hanging in there, ignoring that uncomfortable feeling is my goal. I believe that will improve as I learn. I can see that things are off, but I feel good about it 😊