Update 19 Jan, 2021

OK, so I have attempted the organic forms project.

After obsessing over ellipses for a while now, it was a lot of fun to try an organic shape again! I've had this celery root in my fridge ever since I raided the produce section to buy bananas for the contours exercises. The celery root was probably too complex for this project because (just as Brent warned in the lesson!) I found myself getting preoccupied with how to do the textures and little details. But it was so much fun to try!

All those subtle little bumps, wrinkles and tiny cavities are a real challenge to try to convey as they wrap themselves around the main form and the light source changes from direct to reflected. I had fun working on it, though!

I also did a second one to try a basic composition to try to add a background. Unfortunately I had to abandon this before I was actually finished because the cheap drawing paper I used was falling apart and just wouldn't let me darken things as much as I wanted to (I'd never used it before, so I didn't know that would happen). I think it's time to bite the bullet and splurge on some decent paper (I suffer from "paper love" and hate to waste nice paper.)

The next day I was determined to try something simpler so I did this little pear ...unfortunately I only had time to do one. I will do more tomorrow and try different lighting to get more contours.

I bought a butternut squash today and I'm excited to try shading it because it has larger shapes overall -- I have trouble clearly seeing the dark and light values and contours on tiny shapes like the flower end of the pear. The squash has larger forms that should be easier to see.

This is so much fun. Who knew that drawing simple vegetables can be so absorbing. Every time I try it's like going on a little adventure.

If you are reading this Brent, THANK YOU so much for this course and for the time and care you take giving us feedback and encouragement. I could write a whole article about how this course has affected me in positive ways that go far beyond just "learning to draw." You truly are an amazing teacher!

 

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Earlier projects

Cone and Egg, Concave Shapes, Complex Object

I'm still plugging away at practicing my basic circles, volumetric spheres and ellipses every day, but wanted to keep going with the shading, because I seriously think it's going to take me AGES to get good at my basic shapes. (As a side note: I was studying a Leonardo's da Vinci drawing of wheels today and noticed that even he didn't have 100% perfect ellipses there, so that just underscored how difficult it is and made me feel a little less frustrated ;-) ). 

The cone and egg exercise was fun but very challenging. I like the values from the first day best (I used graphite pencils and could break out the 8b for the level 5 value). Looking at my practice images here, I realize I should have tried the grey paper too. Next time ;-)

Graphite pencil 10 Jan

On Jan 11 and 12 I got quite preoccupied with the shape of the egg. It's as if my brain expected to see a prototypical chicken egg shape, but the egg I have is a weird elongated ovoid with an almost flat section in the middle. On the wide end it also flattens out. It's actually a very complex shape (for me) if I'm going to try to capture the nuances of the curve.

So it felt like a constant struggle between what my brain wanted to see and what was actually there. This must be a form of "symbol" drawing, or something related to wanting to put down "canonical" views of things. 

I was also using a black polychromos and have discovered that now that I'm shading things it is very easy to end up with a smudgy mess! 

First cone-egg 11 Jan

Second cone-egg 11 Jan

I was still frustrated with the shape of the egg and the shadow shapes so I did some faster "iterations" to practice

Another try on 12 Jan

 

I am going to keep practicing these as well as my basic shapes, but wanted to try the concave forms.

First I did this bowl. Seeing it now, I wish I had spent more time making the lines in the shadow look nice. The ellipses are still not right, but I think they are getting a little better here than what I could do even a couple of weeks ago.

 

I tried something really hard for me for the next one. When I angle a vessel's opening away from me, the axes of the ellipse rotate, and for some reason I have a really hard time with this.

I tried this cup at two different angles. I think the cup on the bottom left came out best. You can see what I was going for with the cups on the right, and how frustrated I got by the shape of the opening. For me, the practice ellipse at 3 o'clock is the closest to what I was seeing.

 

I was really eager to try the more complex shape, but couldn't find anything good here at home (everything was either too difficult, too simple, or...just not something I could get excited about trying to draw). So I found this cute little robot.

This little guy was not optimal for practicing the cast shadows, but I think OK for practicing the form shadows and values. You can see my preoccupation with ellipses because I actually rounded out the back edge of his head instead of making it more pointy like in the reference photo!

Again, I regret not doing this on grey paper, because I think it would have made it easier to try to get a better highlight value. I kept having do do a lot of erasing to fix smudgy  messes (oops!).

So this is where I am so far. It is tempting for me to just focus on all the problems that I see, and all the frustration of having my taste and appreciation develop so much faster than my skills. But  hand on heart, I am 100% certain that I couldn't have done anything close to this when I started this course in late November. So that's all the encouragement I need to keep practicing!

Having said that, I'm looking forward to trying the organic form just to have a little break from fretting over my ellipses and shapes. There is more wiggle room form-wise with squashes, potatoes, etc. And there's a celeriac root in my fridge that's been calling my name...I hope it won't be too complicated because I'm dying to try drawing it. It's beautiful. :-)