Three value studies. Realized that I tend to make darker values midtones and midtones into darker values when they lay somewhere in between. This was a fun exercise! It also taught me a lot about how the masters spatially organized their paintings, especially Lepage and Rockwell. Really interesting to notice that!

First are the five heads from the development drawings and then five new drawings. Thanks for any feedback! I know I tended to overwork some of them, but it was challenging to avoid doing that. I like the solidity of the second new drawing (of the woman glancing left, so I can see some progress. Thanks!

I enjoyed how quietly meditative this exercise was. It was challenging! I struggled especially once it came to the lighter values. It seemed as if just putting pencil to paper once made the value too dark and somewhat indistinguishable between shades 2 and 3. I also didn't have a 2H so that could be an issue. Overall, it's fun to think about how just little shifts in value can have a big impact!

I finally put my drawings side by side with the reference, which really helped me to see the issues. I have a habit of making the faces too wide and not shaving down the sides enough. When there's a tilt upward, I tend to not make the tilt dramatic enough.

I really like this approach! Easy to remember, not so easy to execute, but I feel myself improving. I think I need to lean into more exaggeration of the angles and curves to get the full effect of the gesture, and also pay more attention to the curvature of the head and neck. I struggled a lot with understanding how to draw the ellipse at the base of the neck to suggest the curve of the torso. I really liked the suggestion to identify the pose by a word and write it next to it. I'm not sure that my sketch communicates those expressions but it helped to create like a mental visual taxonomy of how gesture and expression correspond.

The demo helped a lot! I first tried the subway and liked it so much, I drew my bedroom from memory (with occasional jaunts upstairs to take a quick look based on the POV). I admit that getting the ability to use the ruler to lay in the grid was too tempting to resist when adding my initial verticals and horizontals, such as the mattress, doors and door frames and the bookshelf. The remainder of it I largely did by hand but I found that removing that variable of having to create a straight line by hand, helped me to better control the other variables such as how to imagine objects in a three-dimensional space, which was challenging, but a fun brain exercise. Again, I did this from memory, which I don't usually do, but I really like getting lost in that process. It seemed to exercise another part of my brain that I don't usually.

Finally got around to finishing this project and hopefully will catch up with the class soon! I drew a library type of room and got a bit lost in the details. I also took the sketch into clip studio and did a lineart overtop to see how it'd look cleaned up. I used the ruler for the long lines digitally but practiced freehand for all the books. I feel it'd look better doing it all one way though and maybe using a textured brush. Regardless, it took a lot of time that I wish I spent just drawing more of these in my sketchbook... lesson learned I guess!

I don’t ever draw from memory but I enjoyed the process. Man I really wanted to use a ruler but I resisted! This took me a lot longer than I expected. Will try again and again as it was the first go.

L2 About 15-20min each, after adding more detail. I didn't have access to the paper and charcoal.