A bit of a cautionary tale.

I've been having issues with pen pressure and keeping consistent gradients for a while.
I have to push pretty hard to get an opaque brush to apply the actual color i selected and when i started out 6 months ago I chalked it up to not understanding the brushes i was using.

Today i finally thought about it again and i realized something was wrong with my tablet pen.
After checking the settings i realized that at max i was getting 65% of the maximum pressure when pushing as hard as i could.

I opened up the pen and blew into it (to try and clear out anything that might be stuck) and lo and behold it now hits 100% pressure with half the force.

I'm not used to the pressure being this hyper sensitive so it will probably take a while to adjust my muscle memory.

I don't have any studies for today because I have been spending the entire day trying to figure out how to adjust to the new pen pressure so here is some Asaro head studies I did last night.

No crazy updates since I'm still desperately trying to adjust to to my newfound pen pressure.
Been doing Asaro head studies as a way to get used to the pen pressure.

Thanks.
It´ll definitely take a while to get back up to speed.
I'm just doing some simpler things like gesture drawing and sketching heads at the moment since it lets me focus on trying to get adjusted to the new pen pressure.
I should be able to assume proper studies soon thought

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Starting to feel used to the new brush pressure.
Still just doing whatever studies I find easy and comfortable so I'm capable of focusing on adapting instead.

In my quest to become used to my new brush pressure I have gotten really into doing portraits.
I used to focus really hard on one thing at a time, just grinding away at value studies or anatomy for a month at a time.
Right now I'm really just enjoying taking "side trips" to study whatever infatuates me in the moment.
I should probably do some more finished pieces of art, but there are so many things to explore, and polishing things for hours feels like wasted time when I could be exploring more.

Am I wrong in thinking that i learn more by not polishing things fully and just focus on each study until it reaches a stage where I feel like I've captured the essence of what I was looking to do?

(old still life studies from June. I did 3-4 of these a day for 3 weeks straight until i started feeling insane from it)

Still just doing head studies at the moment. There are so many different types of heads to explore!
Mostly just trying to separate the form into light and shadow since it feels like it holds the most information.
These take around 40-60 minutes so it is definitely not fast, but I'm spending a lot of time just trying to gauge the planes and values.

In terms of gestures things are progressing slowly but i´m having trouble separating overlapping forms (and I kinda feel like I tend to over-abuse wrapping lines to show direction instead of capturing it in the general flow)

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Thanks for the recommendation.

I read "drawing the head and hands" by Andrew Loomis a few months ago but I din't fully grasp most of it at the time.
I'm definitely thinking of going back to reread it now that I have more of a grasp of some of the fundamentals.
Are there any of his other books you would recommend?

(Still just doing studies from photographs since I don't feel confident enough to study without reference at the moment. Tried giving them a bit more polish today)

No major updates today.
Just reading Loomis and trying to take notes.

I tried doing some studies and after feeling frustrated about one of them i decided to just experiment with it using a textured brush.
The anatomy is way off but i sorta ended up liking the feel of it.

Thanks a lot. I´ll be sure to check out those books as well.
David finch also looks very interesting, i'll be adding him to my list of things to watch during lunch

I got through "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Loomis and started trying to re-enforce the structures of the planes of the head by doing trace overs on photographs.
Definitely feels like I could use it.

I'm using Marco Bucci's "Understanding and Painting the Head" video course to go over individual parts of the head whenever I have questions about something specific.
I find it quite nice as a supplement to Loomis's book since each part of the head is split up into 30m videos with live examples on how to paint the planes.

(I din't have that much time to draw today since I had to read so much will continue tomorrow)

Continuing the grind to reinforce the planes of the head.
Struggling a bit with the chin & complexity of the areas around the eyes.

Still studying the head and reading up on everything I can.
I've been having fun trying to capture likeness of some more recognizable faces.

Mainly having trouble keeping proportions and distances between the planes which causes the faces to have resemblance but look off.

This took around 2 hours (Still feeling pretty slow)

In my quest to try and get better at drawing faces I've been experimenting with breaking down famous faces into simple shapes.
I feels like the simple structures of the face holds the secret to creating good faces (and achieving likeness)
I don't care too much about achieving likeness but it bothers me that I'm not capable of doing it well

Here is Emma Watson (which once again shows that I have trouble with proportions and spacing I need to get better at planning out the face and measuring before i start)

Still just doing basic 20m studies and trying to get the essence of the faces down.
Starting to feel that I'm becoming a bit stagnant in my studies so I'll probably be changing my focus to revitalize my energy.

Definitely feels like I've picked up a bunch of smaller knowledge bombs in the past week that are helping me create faces better/faster.

Been sick so I decided to let the pen rest until I got better.

Currently trying to gauge what I should be working on next. Mainly just experimenting with different drawings to see where I feel uncomfortable and what i have issues drawing.
I'm moderately satisfied with my anatomy, but hair and hands are still a struggle.
I'm also not great on clothes which is why I tend to draw figures in underwear.

I'm leaning towards sorting out those 3 subjects and getting a better grasp on them and then trying to get better at rendering.
I can do rendering to an okay extend if I have reference but when I'm drawing from imagination like below, it tends to looks unfinished and messy.

As a side note I've been trying to do gestures by drawing using exclusively my elbow.
They lose a lot of proportion and "finish" but gain a whole lot of movement from it.
Regardless it is helping me let go of my need to populate gestures with anatomy and details which lets me focus on the flow of the pose.

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