Ooof - That's a tough assignment! I could probably spend the entire year just doing this over and over again. I selected Kim Jung Gi and Glen Keane as my artistic "parents" for this exercise and boy I was not ready for what was in store. For Kim Jung Gi I selected just a small portion of one of his drawings (the pig body) - I ended up not focusing so much on the lines themselves but how to put them down like him, without guides. I didn't know much about him before this course so I was only exposed to the buzz around his ability to do these drawings without sketching anything out first. I'm pretty sure I bit off more than I could chew but I gave it a shot and had an ah-ha moment when I came to the realization that it's probably just like learning to write the letters of the alphabet - first you have the guidelines to draw your letter shapes then you eventually can write without the lines. I figured one of the many "letters" KJG knew how to "write" was "pig body". I don't know if that makes sense to anyone reading this but something clicked for me regarding understanding - even if my attempts at actually drawing the pig body leaves much to be desired. My second "parent" Glen Keane has a style I would really like to emulate. This one I think I did a little better with the actual drawing and line quality. I had a few false starts and the big takeaway I got from attempting it was that I really needed to focus on the overall gestures first then build up from there. My lines are a bit contrasty compare to the original - I'm still trying to get better control of my digital tools. I was a pleasantly surprised to see the "dragon head" shape in the tail after studying the drawing closely.

Here's my stab at the assignment. I have to admit that I cheated a bit to get the initial outline (and even then I didn't get it completely right) because I wanted to get to playing with laying in values and blending. I feel like I could spend forever tweaking this image and finishing more detail but I also want move on and learn more stuff.

Wasn’t quite sure how to handle the light and shadow lines on the side of the rhino that is mostly in the light (this is before watching the demo) - at any rate here’s my first shot at this.