More Exercises from "Keys to Drawing"

Well, first of all I hope that anyone is reading this had a Happy and Merry Christmas! I wish you a Happy New Year as well!  With the holidays in full swing and family visiting I haven't been able to draw every day, but I still been able to do some drawing. Here is a sample of some of the projects from my book I have been able to do. 

The first one is an attempt to use "masters" techniques. First to copy an original and then to emulate what a master has done in ones own art. I used a self portrait by Kathe Kollowitz done in charcoal. I think I chose this piece simply because it was done in charcoal. I have never really used this medium before and found it a quite enjoyable. Here is an image of the original followed by my copy:

The next image is the piece where I had to emulate this style in a piece of art done on my own. I did use a photo image from shutterstock.com for the model. Here is the outcome:

These last few pieces are just some of the additional projects from this same book. There are some short gesture drawings and then some studies in shading or tone. The last piece was a photo found in the book. The idea was to redraw it matching the tones found in the original photo with the recreated piece done in pencil. 

Original

                                                                       

                                                                  My Re-creation