Fedodika the Koala

[Fedodika]

been painstakingly trying to figure out this method nathan fowkes is teaching in the book. im really internalizing the importance of form wrapping in shading. And i know now why i was struggling with it, my first attempt with the compressed charcoal i did all vertical lines which as you can guess, dont follow the form and any mark you make of any other direction betrays that and flattens the image. soooo, i tried some sketches in my sb to work smaller, im not editing or holding anything back on the boo boos on these. whacky proportions here and there, sometimes a stroke of correctness. 

These are all studies from nathan fowkes book im on pg 72 now
Ill give a self critique of each of these in order
1. I did a fine job on the left image, the right face has cartooney unrealistic proportions but the shading is following the form and getting the right idea. i used a blending stump for the first time in a very long time, and was pleasantly surprised
2. the top image has a shoddy job on the cheek bone shading and the shape design on the nose and forehead doesnt hit the mark as the reference. as for most of these the excuse is just clocking it around 10-25 minutes and just lack of seeing the mistakes till hindsight
3. Learned some cool things from this piece, main issue is just pushing values deeper, but the photo isnt very accurate to the actual values which are more accurate and less high key
4. this was more succesful, got the lay in decent, had a mannish look for a while but it ended up with a nice feel and im not ashamed of this one despite still being manly, its supposed to be a woman
5. the face jaw has a weird quality, but i got some decent luminosity on the hair for the lead i was using, not a great study by any means
6. you can see clearly here the problem with not using a well sharpened pencil and trying to render a young womans face. The  pencil lines lay itchy looking marks that make the skin look ugly. at the same time you can see the compressed charcoal in the hair has nice thick marks that are appealing. I was struggling to follow the form on this, as usually when im drawing a young womans face its in light and rarely in shadow, so id usually add minimal shadow and plane work
7. This ones nose bothers me being too narrow, but i sharpened the pencil and you can see a big difference in the mark making on the face. the hair is done with the stick and has nicer marks. the face isnt a great likeness, but it got me appreciating the sharpness aspect to begin with.
8. This is probably the worst of the bunch, bad values sloppy lines, bad likeness, just a complete faliure.
9.This is where id figured out the form wrapping thing with the charcoal stick. I think the image reads well and the strokes are starting to catch on mentally for me. i think the cheeck bone is sloppy but i like the side of the face in light and i think its a decent likeness and a solid drawing for what it is. i feel like i nailed the eye in light so that was a good feeling
10. proportions are whacky, cheeks too wide and the angle of the head is off, the shading isnt anything im stressed out over though, again more contrast is better but mechanical pencils dont get that dark