Well, suddenly toward the end of this drawing, the totally unexpected happened - I started getting the kind of line quality we're supposed to be going for. I thought it was never going to happen - try as I might, I was gritting my teeth and tensing up pretty hard on the pencil, and making slow-ish, wobbly, too-thick lines with all kinds of problems. But on the neck and shoulders, once all the pressure of that face was past, I loosened up and made quick, light, somewhat-accurate-ish lines, not quite as good as I think Jeff is looking for, but close. Then I was even able to go back and re-draw some of the worse lines on the face and make them better too. Apparently I'm now able to release my death-grip on the Conte pencil!!
And in related news, my B pencils came in today - I had started the warmup page below with the 2B's I've had all along, but was able to finish it up with a B, and it makes a noticeable difference. Easier to draw lighter, and to control shading - it doesn't automatically go all the way to solid, heavy blacks. Also, I'm pretty happy with the core shadow on that sphere. I noticed I always tend to do them wrong - the terminator should be an ellipse around the center of the sphere, like an equator line, and I always tend to make them too high. But this time it looks much better to me - though maybe I'll go all critical on it tomorrow, who knows? Pro tip - the drawing below got a lot of help from an eraser - otherwise the shading wouldn't be so smooth and nice. Not the way we're supposed to do it, but Im just playing around, and I felt like I need to start making some decent looking drawings, even if it means cheating. So good for the morale when working on something as difficult and frustrating as Asaro heads and Reilly abstractions!
And finally - I've had to go back and refresh my understanding of the Loomis head construction method. In particular, placement of eyes in profile view - how far back they sit, and placement of the hairline. I was pretty arbitrary with where I put it before, but it needs to be placed pretty carefully, since it gives you the standard of measurement you'll build the rest of the face from - a little bit off and you end up with a really long or short face.
Watched all but 2 of the videos from Figure phase 1 today. Looks like it isn't going to be as hard for the most part (he said arrogantly... ) - except for the planes and Reilly figure stuff. I'm starting to understand the approach Jeff is putting u through - first you get control over your drawing instrument. Then, once that's been established, you can loosen up again and get a bit sketchy - but without losing accuracy.
Ok, here's more pictures to look at:
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