That was more difficult than I expected. This is a copy David Malan's Jon Snow.

I jumped right into the light-shadow variant. The first one is represents the lighting as shown in the reference photo. For the second one I tried to inverse light source, so that it comes from below left. For this version I used the rhino-red-line provided by Stan so that I did not have to trace it all again from scratch.

Second attempt at this challenge, not that satisfied with the results.. I feel like I haven't reached that coveted looseness yet, I still lean a lot towards that dreadful stiffness.. I'm sure it will get better with time, though. Thank you and hope you enjoy!

Absolutely loved drawing those!

This was tough. One of the hardest parts was just trying to find someone to study, so I ended up picking from the shortlist, and went with David Malan. I like his style. This is just my interpretation, but I feel the variety in the types of lines he uses is subtle but expressive, and his hatching has a directional quality to it that draws the eye in. While some of his hatching/shading seems loose and relaxed, having tried to emulate it, I learned quickly the amount of control and skill in actually producing those lines. Mine involved a lot of erasing and redoing, getting trapped in my perfectionist mentality so the lines constantly felt stiff and awkward. I also struggled with some of the line weights. I used a 0.5mm mechanical pencil like he uses, but had to switch to a regular graphite pencil to get some of the lighter, softer lines.

Alright, after watching Stan's demo and part of the critique video and since I was not very satisfied with my work I tried again and came up with this... The one drawing without reference is the one I made up, obviously.

I created this something out of imagination. Usually I create realistic subjects so I am really not used to this.

It took me several tries to get to the attached versions. I am not used to do searching lines yet. It seemed to get better with each try but it is definitely something I am going to continue practicing on.

Redoing the portrait after watching the demo and critiques

After watching the demo and critiques I also did the level 2 assignments.