2. The two pieces I've chosen to show my artistic growth are the still life (above) and the self portrait (See "This Class is Drawing to a Close Part 1"). The reason for this is that these are two projects where I used pencil and a lot of shading. The difference between the two is that the shading was better in the portrait (and I didn't finish the still life, but I digress). The shading in the still life is too uneven with sudden shifts from dark to light with limited medium values. While the shading on the portrait isn't amazing, there is still a definite improvement in my skill with a pencil.
3. The two most helpful mini-lessons we did were the gesture drawings and the chalk eggs. The chalk was a nice change of pace from pencil and it was a material that was easy for me to use while also allowing for good shading and easy blending. The gesture drawings were definitely helpful for the kind of drawings I usually do. I have always struggled with drawing poses in general, and while this didn't make me master anatomy, it was a good start. I do wish we could have done more detailed gesture drawings, with some of them in our own styles instead of just realism.