Project - Simplify from Observation
Project - Simplify from Observation
This lesson is premium only. Join us in the full course!
05:36
48K views
lesson video
Project - Simplify from Observation
courseDrawing BasicsFull course (185 lessons)
$159
assignments 8118 submissions
Vance Viggiano
When you can't decide on Level 1 or Level 2. I thought it might be fun to try it on gray paper. Everyone's work is inspiring! Happy to be learning with you all!
LESSON NOTES

Alright guys, let's jump into the deep end and see how you do! I feel like we've been talking a lot and not drawing enough. So, before we move on to learning about Lines, I want to give you an opportunity to spend some time doing a simplified drawing. You’re going to draw a pear or portrait if you’re doing the level 2 project. I know… A fruit isn’t the most exciting thing to draw, but it’s going to allow you to focus on the process I’m going to show you, instead of being distracted by a difficult subject matter.

This will let us see where you're at with your skills. It’s totally fine if you're at zero. Kind of expected actually. But, you'll identify right away what you struggle with. And you’ll be introduced to a lot of the skills that you’ll be working on improving in this course.

You can draw from the photos I provided in the downloads tab, or find your own fruit and draw from life. Pick a fruit that has an interesting shape you like. Put the fruit on your desk and shine a light on it. Move the light around until you like the balance of light and dark shapes. 

If you don’t want to draw the photo I provided, or you want to do more than one, feel free to find your own photo. Just make sure you choose a photo with a strong single light source that creates a clear separation of lights and shadows. Many moons ago I wrote a blog post about good photo reference.

Make sure you take a photo of it from your point of view, so you can include it when posting your drawing in the community. If you want to be critiqued by me or others in the community, we'll need to see what you were drawing. 

Join us in the premium course to get access to this lesson, full lesson notes, assignments, demonstrations and critiques!

DOWNLOADS
jpeg
level-1-pear-1.jpg
2 MB
jpeg
level-1-pear-2.jpg
2 MB
jpeg
level-1-pear-3.jpg
2 MB
jpeg
level-2-portrait.jpg
1 MB
mp4
project-simplify-from-observation.mp4
183 MB
txt
project-simplify-from-observation-transcript-english.txt
5 kB
txt
project-simplify-from-observation-transcript-spanish.txt
6 kB
file
project-simplify-from-observation-captions-english.srt
9 kB
file
project-simplify-from-observation-captions-spanish.srt
8 kB
ASSIGNMENTS

Use the reference photos in the downloads tab or go find your own reference and start drawing! Remember, this project is all about simplifying to clarify.

Make sure to keep these 3 things in mind:

Shapes - Draw your shapes with straight lines
Values - Use only 5 values. 2 in the shadow and 3 in the lights
Edges - Make every single edge sharp!

I'll publish my drawing demos of both levels next Tuesday so you can watch me go through the problem solving process. For a chance to be included in the critique videos, you must submit your drawing to the community by January 26th, 2023, so I can begin filming and producing the critique video.

@kutai
13h
Not easy but will be better the next time
Alden Reed
19h
Various attempts before watching the demo and one after.
Valentine
Here are my attempts with the pears. I have no clue where I put my pencils, so I had to use marker for the shadows and light.
tin kramarić
This is my first attempt, any feedback would be useful
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Very nicely done. I don't have much in the way of notes even. The one thing you can try next time is to get your dark values a little darker. For this exercise, I recommend having two levels of dark, and three of lighter tones, and they should be pretty far apart in darkness. Drawing a little tone scale on the side of the paper really helps. Well done!
@jkbowman83
Light values were harder than I anticipated.
Dana Cross-Payne
First attempt without watching the demo. Feedback welcome!
Uljana
2d
Hi! Started a while ago and wanted to start over :) I believe I did a decent job with separating light and shadow. I struggled to differentiate the two shadow and light tones, though. One of my biggest issues is perfectionism, so I really tried to not focus too much on the outlines of the pears/ the face Plus, I tried to make all my lines and shapes more intentional Please let me know what I can improve on :)
Umberto
2d
This is my attempt. It definitely wasn’t easy for a first assignment! Thanks in advance for any feedback, it’s always very welcome.
Uljana
2d
These turned out rly great! :D The proportions of the pear turned out nice I think you have a good understanding of where the lights and shadows are. You can definitely push the dark shades even more :)
J Ko
2d
I thought my biggest issue would be perspective/proportions, but I really struggled with the light shades. An unexpected surprise was that I felt myself improving as I worked, resulting in many "wait, that's not right, it should be this" moments in the beginning.
Jessica Gillespie
This was my first attempt. I find that the difference between the shadows and the darkest light is difficult to see sometimes.
@neevey
3d
Hi everyone! I started this course a while ago but took a long break. Now, I want to start over from the beginning. To be honest, I was more nervous about posting this update than actually getting back into drawing! I feel a bit silly, but I'm here now. And here is what I managed to draw:
Martha Muniz
Welcome back! Your submission looks great! Let me know if you ever have any questions :)
@othnielps
Complete begginer, I tried both assignments
Melanie Scearce
Thanks for posting @othnielps! Did you find anything challenging about this project?
@johnny7
4d
pre sketched the figure in read and went in with a bit of cross hatching since I was running around with a .5 led pencil and a red wooden pencil. so I kinda was working on proportions and giving enough context on depth
Sean G
4d
Drew on 9x12 strathmore drawing paper; It took me 10 iterations to try to find my flow over a couple of days. In the beginning I was perplexed like learning the ins and outs of a new puzzle.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
These are great. Way to go to push through it. That's a key to success!
Nachelle Aldous
This was difficult! I found myself wanting to quit. I found it hard to make a clear distinction between dark midtones and light shadows on a complex form. I'm looking forward to getting the hang of this.
Uljana
2d
i really love how smooth/ even each tone is :) Looks great!!
Chuck Ludwig Reina
You did a great job. Love how this looks!
Hodiyah Green
I think I did pretty good with this pair, I must say it is pretty hard to find the shape of the values.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Nice job! This came out great.
Nachelle Aldous
Happy to hear feedback! Thanks!
Patrick Bosworth
Nailed it! This looks great! I really love the uniformity of your shading direction, and your values are really well handled! Great shape design, too! Be sure to check out the demo/critique for these. Looking forward to seeing your level 2 of this project!!
Imraan K
5d
pear #3, messed up the values but the shapes got better
Martha Muniz
Hey there! I agree that your shapes are looking pretty good, so nice work! For the values, I think the section that may have thrown you off is the middle section. The lightest values (1 and 2) look great, and I really like the level of darkness you achieved with the darkest value (5). I do think you could take away some of the space given to the 2nd lightest value and the darkest value to make more room for the middle values, 3 and 4. Value 3 looks like it's on the right track, and though it's hard to tell where Value 4 is currently, try aiming for something right in between your current 3 and 5. Let me know if you have any questions!
Tim Norris
Pear #2. Circled back around to this because I found it frustrating the first time. No less frustrating. At least I can sort of begin to see the halftones this time.
Mengran Xie
1st attempt - finding the direction of shading was pretty hard -. -
Martha Muniz
Looking pretty good! I would just recommend pushing the darker values a bit by adding more layers of shading. Specifically if the 2nd darkest value were darkened a touch and the darkest value darkened to the most you could achieve with your pencil, that would make all the values more clear and distinct from one another.
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!