So I am currently reading some classic art books on recommendation as part of my quest for improvement. I started with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and realized after I bought it that I had done several of these execrcises in my Middle School Art Class - I had a great middle school art teacher named Mr. Scott. Anyway, the first exercise is to draw a self portrait to be put away until after all of the exercises are complete. Another self-portrait is then done, hopefully with a tremendous amount of improvement. Here is mine - notice the slack-jawed look of concentration while looking in the mirror. I think on the final one I will smile the whole time even if it hurts. This took about 30 minutes and is a humbling exercise.

Here are a couple of other sketches I have done in the past weeks.