Well, there is nothing as humbling as watching the red lines light up the paths where you didn't quite capture the essence of the model reference you were drawing from. For today's exercise, I utilized a tried and true method of learning illustration.

Trace over the reference image (which I forgot to upload... but trust, it looks soooo much better than what I've shared here.), then draw from the reference image, like you see in the next photo below. And then you overlap your illustration with the reference image to see how close or far off you are.

The last two images here show the areas where I missed the mark on my lines. I did get an eyebrow correct mostly! That's a win. In fact, the eye placement was pretty much spot on, but everything else like the mouth and nose and face line were off, which resulted in everything else being off, like the hair and neck and dress.

I believe I skipped a step where I was supposed to recall and draw from memory, but I will be attempting that again tomorrow with a different portrait reference and try again. The red lines show me the feedback I need for why things look wrong/off. This will be valuable moving forward for my goal of becoming a manga illustrator by the end of the year.

Thank you for reading!