Our in class projects were intended to give us the basic skills needed to complete the final project.  Initially, our drawing tool was the Conte crayon.  While the crayon is a valid artist tool, I found that I was pretty clumsy with it.  I had not used one before (this crayon is not like a Crayola) and I never really got used to it, although I tried.

After about a month of using the Conte crayon on newsprint (cheap paper stock), we moved to pencil for the final few weeks of the class and worked on sharpening our detail work and value (shading) skills.

The series of pictures below walk you through the progression: