your art class is showing it's liberal bias again. They are not teaching you form contrast and color or at least doing a shading primer to show the 16 grades between white paper to death dark with a pencil. doing multiple types of artwork in bizarre mediums was why I stopped bothering with college myself in the 70's, 80's and lastly in the 90's. They only got worse. That said my last art class (2014) showed me how to draw shade blocks with a no. 2 pencil.

You need to study books instead of go to class. I recommend a few books for you to draw from to get an idea on how to make yourself as good as Nomax or Strype a lot faster than me. You're younger and not burnt out on life yet so you can develop better than I did, (self taught, never could afford a 'good art college').

No. 1 Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Anatomy and or Dynamic Figure Drawing", no. 2 James Gurney's "Light and Color", and no. 3 Joseph Sheppard's "How to Paint Like the Old Masters". The last one is done with progressions to help show you under painting and can be used directly to paint with (computer) light on multiply, in layers.

The first one shows you how to create easy blocks to draw more complex forms from, and you can extrapolate from the two to extend it into whatever you intend to draw..

the middle one shows you how to use contrasts, light diffuseness and detail, and shadows to get Fabercastel results. James Gurney used to illustration for National Geographic before he did all the painting for the Dinotopia series on TV and in Books. Hogarth did Tarzan in the 60's for the national newspapers and book covers for authors in the same period. Sheppard just made a great book to study from, he is just a great artist from the 50's that was sent to an art college.

Nomax, Stype and Fabersastel here on FA show where they got their technique from. Necogami, Blotch and Dark Natasha use different techniques instead of the three people I watch on FA, or, the books i mentioned.

I see!! Well this piece was more of a WIP, and my professor (who is Polish, btw!!) will help us further progress with these including the other 2 plates I need to draw and etch, which were used with a scribe needle, and the dark stuff on the plate is AG liquid.

I'll take note of those books, and see why or how everything has been "changed" or "oversimplified"