Challenged myself to do all 24 before watching demo and critiques (as that's a few hours of content). Most went fast, and noticeably got faster the more I progressed. What do you think could improve? I doubt I don't have blind spots :). I consulted the eBook a few times as well, but I'm really eager to watch the demos and continue with new drawings!

This was fun! Level 1: I watched the critique and demos and I will do a better job in the future, but I think I did pretty well on these. Lines could and should be a lot cleaner!

Before watching the demonstration, wanted to challenge myself with the one Stan has done there. 2.5 hours! After comparing digitally, I have to say I'm very happy with the features and overall results, since I draw using the image on my monitor and use hand+pencil for measuring. But it's also glaringly obvious that the right side is not wide enough: I noticed after further measuring it was much too wide, but it seems that I overcompensated and made the right side of the face too small after corrections... And never cross-checked it again afterwards (it's quite obvious now). As a result, the neck is also much more narrow, as I based most of the right side features on the ears. So, I'll need to keep working on that!

Made an initial attempt I ended up abandoning due to going a way too overboard with the measuring that just became too confusing. After taking a step back and reevaluating I decided a simpler approach was better. The horizontal and vertical plum lines were a big help, but instead of comparative measuring I found some carefully placed horizontal and vertical lines set at key points across the reference were more helpful in measuring out the proportions. I’m happy with how it turned out, just the edge of the hat on the left side needed to come out a little more.

Somewhere between "stage 1" and "stage 2", so I think/hope I'm about halfway in. It's been a while since I didn't just eyeball proportions and angles. Wanted to post some observation for this project: I'm missing the link to the subject of shapes! Measuring, especially using the guides from the previous lesson, is very line based (eg plumb line). I think I expected more to explore the shapes themselves for consistency, like we do in negative space, to fit in this project... The only concrete follow up from the previous project is to start from the big 'simple' shapes and not get lost in details. But that's more about constructing a drawing than it is about the shapes themselves.

Spent some time on this project, pushed myself to spend some time on level 2 as well and not just rush to the next project (even though I've been on these videos for months). New year! I feel these exercises help a lot with loosening up the drawing as a process, working more on experimenting and designing. I notice this mindset is rewiring some of the mannerisms I have from when I was younger.

My assignment contains both levels. I also experimented with more animals and some Pokémon

I decided to do two more, one from yusuke murata again, the other from someone called makoto yukimura. I have definitely felt a lot of frustrations doing this project, mostly coming from not being able to copy the drawings with a hundred percent succes, but I should get rid of that mind set, as I would never get a perfect copy, and that is okay since I am not actually these people. Something I also noticed is that hatching with a mechanical pencil is pretty hard, since I cant get that sharp line sometimes, causing it to be a little crowded and the lines ending up larger than I initially wanted. Smearing with my hand is also very infuriating haha, Sometimes I sacrifice placing a well put line because I am turning my arm and hand is such a way not to smear, but in the end causing my lines to turn out worse. This also got in my way for some of the proportions, but that is of course not the main cause for that particular problem, since I definitely lack here and there with my proportions. Regardless of all that, I still like some aspects here and there, but I have a long way too go, which I am excited for!

Tl;dr personal art discovery essay + great opportunity to draw some Totoro. I seek advice on how to break out 'line work' from illustrations, or whether it's the intention do also include shading/hatching as part of the line study. This was quite exploratory and revealing in my personal journey. The whole thinking about art parents, influences, inspirations, art styles I'd like to 'ascend' towards... I found some great references in https://characterdesignreferences.com/artist-of-the-week and https://characterdesignreferences.com/visual-library, where I discovered art that speaks to me (and art that doesn't, even by great artists...). I've always been very impressed with the art for Final Fantasy (Yoshitaka Amano, Akihiki Yoshida, and the FFXIV era Kazuya Takahashi), and I was very happy to find them there. However, with these and others, as they are more full fledged illustrations, I found it hard to focus just on the lines! A lot of illustrations have the consistent lines and use color and shape to make things interesting. Or use colored lines, which for me is beyond the scope of the exercise, or too advanced for my first attempts anyhow... I browsed a lot. Tried Kentaro Miura (RIP 😔) but again, the shading is such a large part of the inking (lots of just black areas). (maybe that's a large problem, how can I offset the shading from the line studies? Or just don't care and combine them?). Landed on Hayao Miyazaki's watercolors for Totoro. I adore the character designs and the sketches. As I want to improve my watercolor sketching as well, these seem to be a good reference. I like the variation between more gestural loose lines (I've tried to emulate by drawing loose lines, forgoing copying the stroke but copying the idea) and the focused lines where it matters, the lines aid the contour and details of the watercolor, but they work together.

Done with the level 1 assignments! Wanted to focus on the head and horns but now I see zoomed out that the thick line on the rhino butt sabotages that.