I try to understand the horse head

Keep going

I try to improve with head

Just doing

Carry on

Learning tones

Ilusion

I have joined a drawing academy. I think it´s a great opportunity to improve my drawing skills.
I am a person who believes that a learner needs homework because the lesson is not enough to learn.  I am going to work at home that I think I need to improve. My teacher gives me suggestion when I am drawing, at the same time I notice what are my lacks of mistakes. He didn t tell me what I can do but it doen't matter, I am used to learn by myself.
The first thing that I need to practice is the tone. I will try to repeat the tone and secondly I will try to identifie the tone individually.

Drawing

Eighth Experiment

Seventh experiment, an invention

Brown tones set Lyra

My wooden pastel box

And again

Again

Sixth experiment

Just enjoying

It´s an imitation from Maria Baggetta-

Fifth experiment

Fourth experiment

I am learning from this blog: https://cuadernodeunpastelista.blogspot.com.es

I have tried to learn how to draw trees because I need to master every single part of a landscape: trees, sky, water, etc.

Trees

Third experiment

Experiment two: The Bridge (first attempt)

Values, an essential aspect

"The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art."

Jean Baptiste Corot (1796-1875), French painter

Value - An element of art that refers to luminance or luminosity — the lightness or darkness of a color. This is important in any polychromaticimage, but it can be more apparent when an image is monochromatic, as in many drawings, woodcuts, lithographs, and photographs. This is commonly the case in much sculpture and architecture too.

Tone and tonality - A quality of a color, arising from its saturation (purity and impurity), intensity (brilliance and dimness), luminosity (brightness and dullness), and temperature (warm and cool); or to create such a quality in a color. To tone down is to make a color less vivid, harsh, or violent; moderate. To tone up is to make one become brighter or more vigorous. Tonality can refer to the general effect in painting of light, color, and shade, or the relative range of these qualities in color schemes.

From this link.

I am going to do a new exercise with this photo:
the first way is to identify the values so I have edited the photo in black and white.

Experiment one

I used a web page for getting a reference photo : photos4artists.co.uk
This is my outcome:

It was  an experiment really. last day I tried to draw a sunflower and it was a great failure so I have thought that I have to experiment with my draw to distinguish what need to practice. The basics are proportions, shape, values and tonality and colour.

This work shows me that I make certain mistakes such as grounds, values, borders and edges ( perfiles).
My first goal is to work about values and tonalities. I have noticed that I can´t draw trees because I need to distinguish the different values which make real everything rhat you can see in the landscape.

This is the reference photo:

Noses

drawing without goal

Getting dirty

Just fun

New attempt

 if you want to paint realism well, you have to accept that I think. It’s hard work, and demands a lot of different skills, developed to a high level, working together.

Certainly I am better than I used to be at getting in the right ball park more quickly, though. I think that’s because, with practice, I’m gradually developing more detailed knowledge of my tube pigments and what combinations get me in which area of the colour space. Certainly I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge about value which helps keep me from making basic mistakes.

But look at it like this: Athletes don’t stop training when they get to a certain level of skill and fitness. They continue. Professional musicians don’t stop practising when they reach a particular level of skill and performance. If anything, they practice harder – at least, they do if they want to continue improving.

It’s exactly the same for us. I think it’s an unfortunate hang over of modernism and particularly post-modernism that we can do what we do without having to work – continually work – to develop our skills. We paint realism, and that takes skill, and skill means work and constant practice.

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. On this blog, I try to share what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey in the hope that it might help others who may be struggling with the same things I have.

http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/the-colour-of-shadows-part-two