I tried level 2, now I see I should play more with the proportions, not only with shapes. I had problems with the side view - it was hard to forget about 3D thinking and identify simple shapes. I gave up with the fox this time, I have to come back to this exercise again sometime.

This exercise was like a healthy food: not very tasty, but you hope for the future benefits...

I was struggling with this exercise today and gave up, because the result looked weird for me. After watching two first thumbnails made for Rembrandt now I see it really should look like that. I only began with too many details, but generally I understood the assignment well. By the way, I've almost fallen asleep watching the first part - the music was so relaxing.

Thanks for the detailed comment about the light. My desk lamp was good enough for all my hobbies so far, even for fairly precise work, like sewing or drawing with a fineliner. But distinguishing the subtle differences between the values in this assignment appeared difficult. I definitely have to test some different bulbs.

My first attempts - even for level 1 - were rather chaotic. Then I practised organizing lines weight doing the "Perspective challenge" (all drawings can be find in an album in my profile) and I also wasn't very happy with the results. Now I participate in Inktober and I hope some progress can be seen.

Lighting is important also when drawing, not only taking photos. I made the assignment in artificial light first and I corrected it next day in daylight. And I think this version is better - I could see the differences between the values more clearly. Row 1 and 2: The same pencil set, two attempts. Row 3: Polychromos coloured pencils (black, white, two shades of cold gray). I'm not very happy with the result, but I just don't have much experience with blending this type of pencils. Row 4: fineliner, random hatching - without a specific goal, like drawing a texture or showing object's curvature, it doesn't look stunning :-)

Ahoj . I hope you are all fine. There is my grafite pencil shading practice . I prefer pen and ink , but i want to iprove my graphite shading. So i hope it is not everything bad. I have two questions. 1 )Is necessary to use blending stump for good quality graphite work ? Because i dont like stumps. the main rason ,is when i use them i feel i lost control under my drawings. 2) Is not topic about shading but . I love make drawings and paintings form live and imagination, for instance live figure studies, urban sketches , sketch people in caffes etc. I strugling make drawing from photo references. Do you have any idea to starting enjoy make art form photo references ? thank you for critique and answers :)

I have a small remark to this assignment. The results of pencil shading are strongly affected by the paper type and standard copy paper (80 gsm) isn't the best choice here. Higher weight papers mostly work better. And even some of them don't keep multiple layers of pencil - applying the next layer scrapes off the previous one, resulting in lighter spots on the darkest values like on the photo below. It's my own old drawing, I just couldn't achieve an uniform surface. If it happens, don't get frustrated, try a different paper.

I actually felt "not ready" for level 2, but I decided to try until I was satisfied with the result. First picture is the final character, the rest are sketches from references.

It was hard not to copy the pictures shown as the example and create something else than an another witch house. I tried to move my stiff imagination, but I didn't have ideas for anything more complex.