’ve been making “ demonstrations ,” images where I try to illustrate my thinking as I try to memorize a reference. I’ve gotten into doing quick small sketches from observation of the subject in my sketchbook first, and I discovered something new: You get to see which parts you need to get accurate for it to look good and which parts you can wing a bit. I call the “parts you need to get right” landmarks, and here is one example.
Here, with this hat , the hat’s crown is approximated by a cylinder extending to the hat’s brim, where it is a circle. I found that this was the only landmark in the hat. As long as the circle in the brim aligned with the cylinder depicting the crown, I could vary the sizes and shapes of the brim, the crown, and the fluffy ball on the side, I could deform the crown, and it would still look good as long as the circle was aligned with the cylinder.
Yours sincerely,