I'm posting my notes from today's session, looking for feedback.

Drawing

Cute girl

Reference Image

Study

I worked for a while on tracing, but scuffed the original and just kinda gave up on the exercise:

Most of the work went into the eye

I made some comparisons to get the different proportions between two references, but I didn't catch most of that in my initial notes, from an ucky preview I happen to get a snap of:

I think the reference is super pretty.🥰 Let's undo it piece by piece to understand what is working here. Removing blush to see if that is the secret sauce:

That didn't really detract as much as I thought, still very cute.

It actually takes a bit of work to reduce the charm; the fundamental features still some through. What if I just erase the eye and replace it with something lazy?

With context 😭 it's literally so uneven

Spike Spiegel

Reference, very low rez, want to capture the pose, then detail. After noticing how impactful the structure and proportions are, I want to work with those basic building blocks. I can develop floating head syndrome later.

I get a rough outline from a sketch

Refining shapes into pieces

More refinements

Final sketch

Tracing was a lot of work, it take like an hour or so to complete this. I used a lot of touch screen. The truth is that this is very beginner level. I hope trial and error, evaluate, refine process will help me advance, but there is definitely a long road ahead of me.

I'm not going to lie, I recognize there are huge issues with learning to draw by tracing. I told myself that I would focus on actually learning from it, hence the notes, but the truth is that I probably need to face my insecurities and produce hot garbage to actually begin tangibly improving.