Double Shading Practice and Mini Octopi

We doubled up on our next Craftsy shading lessons, because the practices seemed easy enough, and also we girls are going out of town and won't be watching the videos (although we DO plan on bringing our sketchbooks).

The first practice was about getting a feel for the unevenness of surfaces. The example started somewhat like this, using an apple for the subject:

I wanted to draw from life (and my phone was dead, so I couldn't really look up any pictures to reference online lol), but it was very late and I didn't want to leave my room to find some fruit, so I folded my mittens together like socks and used that. Haha!

One thing I realized as I was adding the shadow, was that shadows actually have different shades in them and reflected light as well, and aren't just a big black blob in the shape of whatever object is making them!

The second practice was just kind of taking into account where the light source is coming from. The instructor told us to draw a tree either from our imagination (like she did), or from life, and to just scribble in kind of where the light wouldn't hit and stuff. I used my imagination.

Unfortunately, my sisters didn't have their practices ready to share, so I will try to get them on here next time. :)

And here's some mini octopi amigurumi...

I half made up, half majorly tweaked an existing pattern to make these tiny sea creatures. I don't know if that counts as my own pattern or not, but it was fun.