I may be stepping too many steps here but I saw that new video as I've been stuck at "Simplify from observation" lesson struggling with the concept of core shadow, which doesn't seem to be accounted for when I split my 5 values. All I see - visually and what my paint program shows - are stepped values from clearer to darker without the hard band in the middle as explained in the pear demo.

Just a note. If you think you can combine the previous lessons and graph paper into one drawing, obsessive-compulsive people like me may find shocking that your paper may align poorly with a T-square. They are maybe perfect squares, but rotated on an angle overall ? (The math confuses me and my head hurts). I think that unless you have a specific brand reputed to be dead-on on each sheet, graph paper is pretty cheaply made in general (I get mine at a dollar store) and any art based on it is better left alone in its own little world.

I thought I'd improvise on some brutalist "thing". It resolved quite nicely from top and bottom. Simulating various heights from columns on top is just a line away.

Some of Kirsten Zirngibl's drawings resemble kitbashing. A great way to design ships and corridors.

Locking it, not talking it.

Lefty here. It seems like a silly question, but when following tutorials and imitating our right-handed masters, I tend to go against the flow, left to right, just like I'm hand-writing. Should I stick to building line confidence from right to left instead as I try to reprogram my brain from those (many, many) years of pen handling?

I also spent much time learning the tools. One of my main grudges is how sliding the ruler and triangles around mess-up the graphite and leaves stains difficult to erase. Any-hoo ... A couple of pieces: I always have issues centering as I start too much in the center and end-up way too close to the border. The last image shows a bit of my process and how I once vowed to never let used paper to waste - A free real-estate calendar page and I got like 5000 photocopies of a promotional flyer from someone's failed business. Being using them since the '90s 😂

Played with a few of the illusions already shared by other students. Appreciate all the material people are finding and posting. Playing with isometric perspective was new for me. It's pretty fun. Nice to be gaining tools to understand illusions.

I've tried with a charcoal stick and newsprint, and, well, it's tough. Dark comes naturally as there seems to be a hard limit on the amount of charcoal, anything lighter you need to nail the first time around and I had trouble by the third square to do even lighter.

I am very excited for this course. I've had one formal real-life drawing class some 20 years ago, it had a "draw what you see" approach that focused on putting more and more information on paper without guidelines - and that kind of killed my love for the art. My big goal is trying to taking the love back : I like Franco-Belgian artists (here are examples by Schuiten and Moebius, sorry for the poor quality of pictures) that are usually heavy on perspective.