Here's the first 5 from me. Truth be told I'm not quite 100% on the way I'm doing this. If anyone notices any glaring issues with the way I'm doing things, compared to Michael's method please tell me so I can work on doing it "better". I will be revisiting these and the rest as well as work towards changing the shape of some of the references.

Michael I'm sorry but I'm not quite understanding the difference between both methods. I understand the the first one focuses more on direction rather than outline, and this method uses more blocky construction to define the shape but I'm struggling to see the difference beyond one method looking smoother and the other looking more rigid/defined. Am I misunderstanding this?

Oh wow you actually do an ellipse around the sphere to set the direction of the core shadow. I'll keep this in mind for future exercises.

My shading assignment. Used the opportunity to try some different pencils, a fine liner and even a charcoal pencil although mine doesn't quite taper as neatly as Stan's. It's quite tricky, the 3B I've used is a Carand'ache Technograph and when using the side of the pencil it gets that blurry texture, yet the 2B, B and the 4H are technograph and Graphwood and the strokes stay pleasant even when I'm using the side.

Here's my lvl1 attempt. I'd like to get some feedback before I do any more as I really struggle with shading and differentiating tones. I'll definitely do more along the week. On another note how much do the materials influence this exercise? My pencil leaves some weirdly grainy marks if I use the side to shade is this a pencil issue? or a paper issue? I'm using standard printer paper and a Carand'ache Technalo 3B pencil.

Fun fact: penumbra means gloom in Spanish and twilight in Portuguese.

Thank you Michael for looking into my submissions. It's crazy how I hadn't noticed how stiff some where until you pointed it out.

Here are my drawings! 1/2

Here are the first 5 done by me. I feel like I'm getting the hang of this though I still struggle to see when my gesture line ends up being a silhouette or form line. I'm also thinking of ditching the side of the pencil grip when doing these. It sometimes works but it didn't convince me.

While I haven't gotten to the point where I create entire scenarios in my head I do often think to myself "what is < insert body part> doing here?" whenever I need to pose thing from imagination.