It will take practice to internalize it as a part of your process, especially if you have to unlearn old habits, so you really have to stick with it! The key is to start very lightly with your lines, and only darken the lines that you feel confident in. As you go around the page and lay in your shapes, stay light enough that you can just barely see your lines. There is no reasonable expectation that the first lines you put down will be correct. You will need to adjust things as you go, so stay light, light enough that there is no reason to erase. After you have your layin of basic shapes that represent the proportions of what you're drawing is the time to do another pass and start to define the contours. Stan shows this process starting at 2:20 in the demo here: https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/demo-simplify-snail-and-boots-to-csi/comments Practice with the pressure that you put on your pencil while drawing. Drill your lines -- start light and gradually increase pressure with each line that you do. Practice with straights and curves. Focus on building your muscle memory so you don't have to think about it while you're drawing.

I was procrastinating doing this project for a while, I was too intimidated to even try for a bit til i just decided it's not meant to be a masterpiece, just to learn. my observations are brush pen is very difficult to learn to control line weight but I wanted to try to replicate how Takeyasu Sawaki did the line strokes it looks like he used watercolor and colored pencil in the rest of the illustration but i wanted to focus on the brush pen lines he uses thicker lines to indicate joints and muscles, and short little strokes for fur tufts i also think going slower is the key with a brush pen

This is my first digital submission and wow! Talk about learning a new skillset!! It took me way longer than I expected just to get used to the brushes. The first image is the importance method and the second is the light direction with the light source placed at the left of the rhino. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

my only note is i feel like i'm really making it harder on myself with traditional materials with a death grip and no slanted surface where i have to think about these things, instead of doing it digitally where it's automatic for me to hold the stylus properly of course i'm taking the course to get better at these things but man it's humbling

I left the construction lines in, and simplified the details, so I wouldn't trap myself into focusing on contours vs shapes and volumes, plus construction lines prevent me from becoming confused. My biggest barrier right now is drawing shapes in a notebook or on my desk where my arm or sleeve gets caught on the spirals, paper, or edge of the desk and I have to redraw something 30 times :(

The laces were confusing and overwhelming, my brain made up some lines and they might not make sense in my portrayal right boot was done after watching demo, critique, and taking a break i love snails, I actually have several (hundred) as pets! if anyone can explain how to simplify the laces or not get lost in the details, that would be great <3

Tried to apply what i learned from: Project - Simplify from Observation to a still life subject that was a little more interesting to me , while learning watercolor control

Really struggled with overall using traditional materials, and being able to see 5 values was very difficult, at most i saw 4 and made up where i thought 5 (darkest) would be based on the light source. this exercise did help a lot to be able to understand where contour lines should be placed on a 3D form, which is something i was struggling with for awhile if i were to retry this, I'd squint or blur my eyes at the reference to simplify the shadows more easily