I've finally worked gesture drawing into my daily routine. Am going to continue proportion exercise for the time being because its easy and is really going to help cement these ideas in my head. Below is my full figure from reference assignment using measurement tools. Going to keep working on this in a less developed capacity.

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Good job, Adam!
I especially like the one on the bottom left, it conveys a good sense of depth! :smile:

First of all, thank you @OpaqueApple

Started the term 2 classes and I'm dropping some of that practice working on the head. Having to force myself to slow down and Re-learn a lot of this has been a bit difficult but I'm sure i'll see the difference down the road. I know these are a bit messy and some of the foreshortened ones need a bit of work. Going to continue this exercise for sure.

I've rolled the head exercises into my daily warm ups. So I'm doing 8-10 heads from different angles every day. Here I've finally got some Anatomy 2 practice (ears and Noses). So much good knowledge in here. Sad to say it but in all the studio art classes I took in college, none of my professors brought even a fraction of the knowledge of anatomy that Marc is sharing. Wish I would have educated myself sooner.

I'm really wishing I had more immediate feedback when working on the Anatomy 2 stuff, but I'm sharing my progress on it. I'm obviously super not happy with where I am using the tools marc provides in the class to construct my heads, but as with all new skills / tools, I realize they take time to master. Definitely going to keep at the full head practice as I work through the rest of term 2. I really think most of my problem is applying more critical construction and use of good perspective / measuring / etc.

I know I have my own notes on the piece, but if you have any constructive feedback, I'd love to make sure I get some thorough critique regarding this, even if it's just confirming what I'm seeing is wrong.

Hope all have a great weekend.

Head #4 with a reference this time. I wasn't concerned with an exact copy, and I still see things I missed. Trying the bridge the gap between an actual person's face and what the anatomy 2 class teaches to create it. Definitely going to keep at this.

I agree with your own assumption, Adam. In my opinion what you currently need, is an understanding of the general proportions and planes of the head.
At this stage, I would not concern myself with shading yet.

I‘d recommend you redirect your focus from doing pretty pictures to attempting to understand the subject matter youre trying to draw.
What helped me the most in understanding the structure of the head were some videos by Angel Ganev on youtube:


Once you‘ve understood the structure of the head, shading correctly will be a lot easier :smile:
Also: its obligatory to do these exercises WITH reference, by doing that, you‘ll develop a good sense for the general proportions of the face and you‘ll be able to spot individual differences with different models and refs.
Good luck, I hope that helps :smiley:

Marc does a great job explaining the planes of the face. I actually got a lot out of the end of the anatomy 2 class in relation to that. The shading itself is fast, its only a few extra minutes of my day. What I'm experiencing if you check those first three heads isn't that I don't understand the planes of the face, it's that I'm failing to implement the proper perspective over the entire face before rendering anything. I was actually rendering each individual element of the face and then trying to tie it all together and it looked like hot garbage. In the Fourth one I sketched out all the elements before rendering anything and it all came together much easier. Another reason I didn't use reference in the first three is that I've taught myself to copy a person's likeness using a reference without these tools and I am trying to push myself to understand the tools themselves without relying on my current skillset before blending them together. A fully rendered head like the one I shared is only taking me like 30 minutes. I've folded that into my daily practice. So I'm doing 45 min gestures, the proportions, and a fully rendered head, and then working on actual work. As far as pretty pictures go, I've actually not had the confidence to work on personal work last week as those three heads really took my confidence down and triggered some imposter syndrome :confused: Will definitely check out the videos to see if they have anything I can fold into the daily stuff though. Appreciate the time you took to share them and give feed back, Thank you!