I still struggle to get everything in the right spot on the page. I thought maybe I could help myself get over this hurdle a bit quicker if I practiced viewing objects through picture frame glass marked with a grid, and drawing on a Photoshop file or piece of paper containing the same grid. I think it works pretty well.

I thought this might be considered a crutch, but it’s actually recommended in a lot of art books as a way to train yourself to measure. Eventually, you’ll be able to gauge all this stuff in your mind.

Randomly picked someone to sketch. Why Abe? Why not? Heck, I might vote for him in the general election.

Tonight I toyed around with the idea of planes again, spurred on by this short lesson on CtrlPaint.com. This guy’s lessons are great, by the way, and cover the basics as well as more advanced stuff.

I’m not even sure if I did a great job finding the planes here, but just considering them was a good reminder that the head is a mass and not a flat shape, which in turn results in more believable proportions and shading.

A couple of my favorites from today’s class. Above is a rare moment where I loosened up. The teacher mentioned that my initial sketch was too small on the page. So, I spent the last minute of the 5-minute pose enlarging it and quickly scribbling the curves. I need to see if I can maintain this sort of looseness, especially for quick sketches.

The drawing below was done using negative space. In other words, instead of drawing the model, we had to draw the areas of space outside of her, such as the space between her and the pole, which I’ve highlighted in red.

Feeling lukewarm about my latest homework; I can tell I haven’t been practicing enough over the last few weeks.

This week’s assignment was a portrait from the waist up. Wonder if the teacher will notice that I totally cheated by bundling up in front of the mirror, thus avoiding having to draw hands and ears.

Gotta gear up for my first art class in 3 weeks, so here’s a little practice “seeing” my pencil sharpener. Tomorrow I’ll do my latest self-portrait, aka the homework on which I procrastinated (for nostalgic purposes?).