Level 2 assignment. It's interesting how in the 3 value thumbnail you can still see what the image represents, but in the 2 value it kinda becomes abstract. Am I correct thinking that in this exercise we're supposed to use only sharp edges? Or should I have differentiated between sharp and soft?

First attempt: simplifying the first two paintings into 2 and 3 value thumbnails.

Level 2 Ha, that was so much more difficult! My first attempt had values 1-4 clustered really close to each other somewhere in the lighter middle. The second photo is my attempt at correcting it. I feel like this is something I might be coming back to regulary.

For some reason, the piece of information about the 11 squares didn't arrive to my brain... The first two rows have only 10 values total. Then I noticed that little "11" and I made row 3. I only have one gray Copiic marker and I wanted to see how many values I was able to do with it. Maybe I could have done a couple more but they were too similar to each other and I decided not to do them. The second marker was the most difficult one: the point is too fine and I need to practice more . Finally, watercolor (color: Payne's gray) I tried my best with the pictures but it's tricky, especially with graphite.

Level 1 After doing the first pencil scale, I took a photo of it and blurred it to check myself and decided that the transitions between 7 and 6 and also between 4 and 3 where too big and that on the whole I leaned too dark. The second pencil scale was my attempt to correct it. I found it very useful to cover up all the values but two, compare them, and then do the same to the next pair. Helps to see the 'jumps' in values. I like to draw in ink so I tried doing the scales with that medium too, though only the easier version so far. Found it very hard to hatch evenly, the scribble technique seemed to work better.

6 values with graphite and there values with charcoal. Making value with charcoal is always hard!

I explored with HB pencil, full graphite pencils and charcoal. I find the full graphite pencil achieves the smoothest result and it was also the fastest. I like a little grainy texture, though, so the result I get with regurlar pencil makes me happy. I love the charcoal pencil, it's so rough compared to full graphite and gives a truly grainy texture. I tried both the over hand grip and tripond hold, and a curious thing... I found myself holding the pencil right at the end of it, just holding the end between three fingertips like I was about to drop it. This felt very light and more controlled than when I hold the pen near the tip, and put more pressure on it. Lovely assignment and nice experimenting. This is meditative :D.

I think my 7B pencil wasn't sharpened well enough and so I instead of a smooth value I got a bit of a melange pattern, but at least it's fairly uniform ;)

I might have gotten addicted to this exercise ;) First drawing on the left was from memory, it's got notes about the mistakes I noticed. The second is corrected for the mistakes. The drawing on the second page is my attempt to construct it from a different angle. I struggled with this one a lot. Had to go back to the reference photo several times, reenact the pose, had my husband reenact the pose too ;) If anyone feels like doing a draw-over on it, please do!

Back to timed sketches, 2min, and suddenly the drawings don't look so good anymore ;P Also, it didn't help that I was standing at an easel - I forgot how quickly my arm got tired! and sorry for the terrible pic quality. Since these are mostly for my own accountability, I didn't take the time to photograph them better.