Project - Simplify from Observation
Project - Simplify from Observation
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Project - Simplify from Observation
courseDrawing BasicsFull course (185 lessons)
$159
assignments 3777 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
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level-1-pear-2.jpg
2 MB
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level-1-pear-3.jpg
2 MB
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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.

@10abruegger
@josiahseward
Hi everyone. My first attempt
Stephen
9h
hi everyone , pear 1 drawing ,open to feedback.
Allan Poindexter
Did all of them, but didn't realize we could only upload 3 D: Feedback would be appreciated!
@findingpresence
I present to you Pear #1 and Pear #2. Any and all feedback welcome.
Spencer Fox
This course has given me some really good structure which I appreciate. Please let me know how I can improve based on this first attempt. Thank you so much! To anyone who sees this, have a nice day and hello! <3
@cozaman
1d
Alright officially started my drawing journey!
@bannedfrom7
I really love the shape design! It gives it a nice geometric feel. Personally I wouldn’t make highlights close to the shadows away from the light source as that kind of breaks the flow and can be distracting to me, but I see what you were going for there with the little bump where the C Shaped shadow is. But it’s a really fun take on the exercise, nice job!
@cozaman
1d
I should add I did this before watching the demo! Also would love some constructive critiques :)
@devonbock7
First drawing in a long time, pre demo video. Looking for constructive feedback, thank you.
@chinanoahli
I think you're applying too much pressure when you draw, which makes the dark areas look excessively black (and lacking in light value variation). Try adjusting your hand position more flexibly, experimenting with different ways to hold the pencil. Most importantly, keep your fingers relaxed, don't tense them up. I can't quite tell whether you're using digital painting or traditional paper-based drawing, so the suggestions above are based on paper-based techniques. If you're using digital painting, you first need to understand the pressure sensitivity parameters within your tablet driver. Some software (like Clip Studio Paint on PC) assigns independent pressure sensitivity settings to each brush. Beyond monitoring your tablet driver's pressure settings, you'll need to customize each brush individually. (For CSP like software, I recommend keeping the tablet driver's pressure settings at default values, as adjusting them will affect all brushes within the software.) The opacity and blending modes of digital painting brushes also affect the actual painting outcome. This aspect may be difficult to grasp for those who haven't tried traditional paper painting (since they can't compare software parameters with paper painting techniques, especially as the terminology used in software often differs from that of paper painting). If possible, try painting on paper. Only after understanding the differences will you know which direction to adjust your brush settings.
Jonah Last
First attempt at the pear before the demo video, I used a 2mm mechanical pencil and a blending stick. Please critique, thank you.
@bannedfrom7
Nice job! It’s a good drawing but I think you could try making the value changes sharper. I feel like the range here is too limited and blends the values too much to the point where it can be difficult to distinguish the plane changes. Try to be bolder and experiment with the darker colors more and make the edges sharp without too much blending to be more in spirit with the exercise. The shape design and artwork overall is great though!
@elderem
2d
I reattempted it but this time trying to making it really simplistic. I can't tell if it's good or not. Please critique 👍 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QHmvZqKSCwbqucOqUrm0PmNow4kqNn7k
Nathan Youngman
I'm most definitely a level 1 beginner, but I wanted to give level 2 a try so that I have something more interesting to compare my progress to after the course(s). The proportions in my first attempt were way off! Obviously better observation, hand-eye coordination, anatomy and practice will help that. After a few attempts to fix it, I resorted to tracing some of the key lines 🙀 so I could continue with the rest of the exercise. To address Melanie's critique of my pear (thanks Melanie), I chose pencils further away for more contrast. I also tried using toned paper just for fun. It's still a struggle for me to figure out which of the 5 values to use where, and to try to separate the features while also representing shadows. Thanks for any feedback.
Casey Ashe
First attempt + my orange! I found that I struggled with finding the middle values. Does anyone have any tips/tricks for picking out values? Would love to hear them. Thanks!
Melanie Scearce
You'll get better with practice, but it does help to have a general idea of how lighting is structured. Knowing what is going on in each 'zone' helps you know what to look for. Think of your object like a really low poly 3d model wireframe. Each polygon or plane is facing the light sources (direct and reflected) at varying angles, which determines how dark or light in value they are. These are rules of thumb, so not every situation will follow these rules, but in a basic lighting set-up they apply pretty well. You can also practice by experimenting with the value tool: https://www.proko.com/values. It's a good way to check your work after a project like this.
Nathan Youngman
Pear 2 drawn digitally with Rebelle's pencils. I tried drawing a pear from life first, but I didn't have well enough defined highlights. So I started again from a provided reference photo (pear 2). Now I'm going to go eat the pear, the real one. ;-)
Melanie Scearce
This is a great pear! I think you nailed the shapes, and the dividing line between shadow and light is well designed. The only thing that sticks out to me to critique is that your value range is pretty condensed, meaning there's not that much of a step between values. When you do the squint test, your 5 value drawing simplifies to a 3 value drawing because those values are all within the same step. Increasing your value range by darkening your darkest value and lightening that lighter halftone value will help your shapes stand on their own a bit more.
@drawingpeasant
Hello everyone, I started drawing 1 week ago and this is my first try at the pear so I know there are a lot of things wrong. I did everything with a 5B pencil so the shading is bad especially on the light tone. it lacks graduation. the lines are still stiff as well and I didn't simplify the shape enough. I hope you fellow artist could help me notice what else I could improve on and if you have any tips. Thank you :)
Lisa Cox
4d
First go at pear
@elderem
4d
This is a Google drive folder woth all my art from this course. This is my first assignment so there is only 1 drawing right now. Any critique would be awesome 👌 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QHmvZqKSCwbqucOqUrm0PmNow4kqNn7k
Krock
4d
I drew another pear, with similar instructions as before Think the size of the pear and shape is right, but I think I need to improve on lines and edges and def the values.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Nice work! Don't be afraid to get really dark on the shadow side. A strong contrast will help pop the pear off the page.
Krock
5d
My first attempt on drawing the Level 1 Pear. I think my pear might have been bigger compared to the reference, and I just realised its shadow is much larger in the reference. I also may need to improve on values as well drawing the pear stem. If there are more ways I can improve on drawing, please let me know.
@pummeroy
First and second attempt. The edges around the value changes are too obvious, and edges in general are still difficult.
@magnumexpress
Latest attempt of Level 1, this time going back to Pear 3. Any comments or critiques are welcome
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Really nice! You did a great job of finding the edges of the different value ranges. Also your tone is very even, which is hard to do! The only note I would have is to try to find the core shadow, that section between the light side and the shadow side that often is the darkest part of the from. That will help take this to the next level. But otherwise really solid!
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