Warm-up drawings are useful for getting loose and into the flow, similar to how athletes warm up before a game. These exercises can focus on what you want to improve: gesture, line quality, or specific techniques. But you also need to balance them with more focused studies, like still life observation. That helps you develop observational skills and a better understanding of form, light, and shadow. Both approaches have their benefits, and combining warm-ups with detailed studies will give you a more well-rounded skill set.

In my experience warming up the hands serves to warm up the brain as well. But I do think that as an artist, stretching and exercising is hugely important as we sit or stand at a desk for hours at a time. Not just for the hands!

I also frequently find it hard to find more than 3 values in the pear

Welcome back! What matters is that you've come back to it. This is a good start, keep it up 👍

Hi @Jake, nice work! I think the first one is especially good, with its more accurate drawing. I'll do my best to help you further :) Keep in mind that Stan will probably touch on the things I mention further down the course, so don't stress over it 😎 - When drawing keep a vertical and a horizontal line in mind. The vertical line parallel with the vertical edge of the paper and the horizontal line parallel with the horizontal edge of the paper. Having a clear idea of what is true horizontal and what is true vertical can help with the accuracy of the drawing. In the third drawing the pear looks like it's tilting the right --> the vertical relationships has not been captured accurately. In the second value scale, the shape of the squares changes. Try to make the size of the squares consistent and edges truly horizontal and vertical. It might sound overkill, but it's good practice for capturing the more complex shapes of nature. - I would encourage you to do another value scale. The steps look pretty good (you might want to darken the mid value and the second to darkest value. The value scale leans a bit to the light side). The main thing I notice is an uneveness withing each square. In your next one, try to make the values more even. This can take some extra time, but it's a great way to build value control skills. When shading a drawing, a change in value comunicates something, such as a change in form. If the value changes in the wrong place the form might not read the way you intended it to. When doing the value scale I would recommend making the lines for the squares light, so that the edge is created by the filled in values instead (you'll get to practice edge control - in this case making a hard edge.) I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!

Nice! Is it the assignment for this lesson Project - Get Your Tools and Start Playing (I would encourage you to post your assignments under the assignments tab in the lesson), awesome! I'll take a look on you other post as well👍

Hi @Jake, cool drawing! It's great that you try challenging angles, and I think you did a pretty good job. The elliptical line wrapping as a crosscontour around the sphere (the line that the brows sit on), looks really nice! - I think you'll really benefit from, and enjoy taking the Drawing Basics course. It will give you a broad foundation that is going to help you in whatever subject you're drawing. - Try to be lighter on the hand as you draw. This video has some great tips on linework Intro to Lines . - Try to apply the same approach you use for drawing the head, when you draw the features; build the features with 3D-pieces. Do this with light lines, then render on top (Top 5 Drawing Mistakes (at 8:51-->) ) - Since you seem to enjoy working with value, I think you'll appreciate doing value studies. If you're interested, check out this video How to Organize Values (you can get it for free in the Proko Course Sampler ). I found working with 5 values difficult at first, so I started with practicing 2-value studies, then moving to 3, then 4, then 5. For the 2 value studies, I still used the same approach of finding the extremes, then judging a value against those, to discern what group it belonged to. (I attached a paintover of Proko user Tony Vu's work.) If you find it hard to control the value itself, it could be useful to do a value scale, with the drawing tool you intend to use. Draw five squares, and mark them 1 to 5. 1 is the white of the paper. 5 is as dark as you can go with the material. Start by filling in square 5. Get to know the material; apply strokes in different directions, build up the tone from light to darkest, feel where the tip of the tool is touching the paper. Make the tone as even as you can. Then do the same with square 3. The value should be inbetween the strength of 1 & 5. Then you do #2, which should be inbetween 1&3 in strength, then #4, which should be inbetween 3&5 in strength. I hope this helps :) Let me know if you have any questions!

This is a good start! The left eye looks a bit bigger than the other. I'd avoid doing all those splotchy gray values all over the face, I'm not really sure what's going on there, but it looks like you don't have a clear separation of lights and shadow. Structure and studying the planes of the face will help with that. I think the face might be too long as well, or the eyes should be lowered

It's good to know that you are feeling more confident and are drawing everyday...but, Don't give up everything you have been working on or learning about the head. I did a quick sketch to show you some things to think about.

Hey Jake, I did some sketches that I hope will help you with your eyes

Hi Jake! Some things that could help: - Right now your studies seem to be focused on the shape, but pay attention to the building blocks that make it up--the upper and lower lids, brow ridge, cornea, tear ducts, etc. are all 3d forms that have planes of their own worth knowing. The lids will have a thickness to them, and the spherical shape to eye itself dictates the perspective and curvature to the iris and pupil. It's important to understand the construction in order to draw and place them at different angles, and to shade properly later down the line. - Some of your irises/pupils could be larger, there's usually barely any visible eye white on top/below in a neutral eye pose. - For placement, a rule of thumb is that there's about one eye shape length in between. Though it's pretty good with the 2nd example, they do seem rather apart and slightly small in the 3rd image. I hope this is useful. Let me know if you have any questions. :)