Hi Nelisha

Nice work on your octopus exercise. They are a bit dark. You might use a kneaded eraser to take off some of the graphite to create highlights and give contrast.

If you methodically study all of the exercises in the “Pencil Drawing Master Class” in the Acadamy, you will learn how to use all of the necessary tools and supplies to draw beautiful drawings, and have fun doing it.

Hi Nelisha 😊
Larry has given you excellent advice, as always 👍
And please don’t worry about shading too dark. This is one of the most common challenges for beginners. Learning to control pencil pressure is a bit like learning to drive a car. At first, your foot is either on the brake or the accelerator, but with practice your control becomes much smoother 😄 A very helpful exercise is to hold the pencil a little farther back and imagine you are barely touching the paper. Let the graphite build up slowly with several light layers instead of trying to reach the final value in one pass.

Spamming for points