I asked a photographer friend what to do to help you take better photos of graphite drawings, this was her reply: 🖤 Lighting is everything. I always try to use natural light, ideally near a window with soft, indirect daylight. Avoid direct sunlight though—it creates harsh shadows and glare. If I’m indoors and it’s too dark, I’ll sometimes use two lamps set up at 45-degree angles to the artwork to keep the lighting even. 🖤 No flash! Flash almost always ruins the photo, especially with graphite—it brings out all the shine you don’t want. 🖤 Flat and straight. I either tape my drawing to the wall or lay it flat on a clean surface. I make sure my camera (or phone) is parallel to the artwork so there’s no weird distortion. 🖤 Keep it steady. I use a tripod if I can, or just balance my elbows on something to avoid camera shake. It makes a big difference in sharpness. 🖤 Watch for glare. Sometimes even with good lighting, the dark areas can reflect too much. I just move around a bit and tilt the paper or the camera slightly until the reflections disappear. 🖤 Edit lightly. I’ll do a quick edit in an app like Snapseed or Lightroom—just enough to brighten the image, boost the contrast a little, and crop it neatly. I try not to overdo it because I want it to look as close to the original as possible.

One more with changing the pose. Kept the contour only for comparison and can really see how flat it looks without the cross contours.

You’re doing great! What you have here is a fine cross contour line drawing. You could make it look more round if you changed a couple of lines. That’s the only area that seems sorta flat to me.

Nice work, keep it up! I agree -- training your brain to think three dimensionally is a a very useful skill for drawing, especially when you're drawing from imagination and creating original forms.

I really like the octopus! Good choice, I might do it aswell :)

Yes, you got the right idea. The curvy blob shapes you have here are very strong. Great use of overlap. For the ginger root, it might help to find the hierarchy of shapes so you can build your cross contours off of that organically. That biggest shape at the base is supporting the three other shapes, so that's a good starting point. Find the cross contours on that shape and figure the flow out from the shape into the smaller shapes.

Looks great! The cross contours are spot on and the overlapping shapes give your lobster drawing a lot of dimension.

It is a lot to think about all at once, but these are looking really good! Are these wavy lines I marked in red an indication of the contour of the ginger root or the wrinkles of the growth pattern?

Good work!

Hey there -- great practice! I definitely see more form definition and perspective with each new attempt. Something to keep in mind, though I mostly see it in the first few ones, is to keep the point of view of the camera/viewer in mind, so are we looking up/down/right in front of the object? This will affect how the curves will appear: in the first example, because we are looking down at the object, the curves will get rounder and rounder as the object recedes into the distance. With the other two examples, keeping mind which way the cross contours are directed based on where we are looking at the object helps define the clarity. Let me know if you have any questions!

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