Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

5:48 PM, Saturday September 10th 2022

BetweenSkyAndSea DaB Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/paUfXe5.jpg

Post with 75 views. BetweenSkyAndSea DaB Lesson 2

Hello mysterious stranger! Thank you for taking the time to critique my lesson 2 homework.

If you tell me to practice ellipses more, I won't be mad.

P.S. I gotta admit, I used pencil to sketch out the final intersection page before going over it in ink. That's why that page is cleaner. I just wanted to actually understand how intersections work rather than guessing; and besides, I put a LOT of objects on the previous three pages. But if you want to tell me to do it again, I suppose it's within your rights to do that.

Anyway, happy critiquing.

-Sky

2 users agree
6:07 PM, Wednesday September 14th 2022

Your arrows show a good understanding of how forms flow through space and how to clarify form overlaps with shading. Be careful to avoid "loops" where your arrows end up close to where they started, as this can make them seem flatter. Also sometimes you are little conservative with your size increase as the arrow approaches the view. Just something to keep in mind.

On your organic forms, you do a job of keeping your forms simple. However, you are struggling a bit with keeping the variance in your ellipse degree consistent in the contour ellipses. While it is good that you are varying your ellipse degrees, these don't seem to be done in regards to how the form is actually moving through 3D space. Sometimes the degree of your ellipses seem arbitrary. Your contour curves do a better job of adding solidity to your forms.

Your textures are quite well done and it's clear that you took your time in these exercises. You obviously followed the rule of spending most of your time on observation and not relying on memory. My critique here is that in the dissection portion, sometimes when you are creating gradients of shadows, the lighter part of your texture can appear inconsistent with the darker part. All in all, well done though.

For your form intersections, you are drawing way too many forms on the page. Focus on drawing larger forms, take your time on each one, and how they relate to each other in 3D space. The sheer number of forms makes it difficult to assess your actual understanding of how each form relates to each other.

For your organic intersections, your number of forms is much more reasonable. However some of the forms are overly stretched or too complex. Keep them simple, like you did in the organic contours exercise. Also you are using a somewhat excessive number of contour lines. Only use lines that actually clarify the form. Too many contour lines result in visual noise and actually flatten the form.

Next Steps:

2 pages of the form intersections exercise and 1 page of the organic intersections exercise.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:52 PM, Monday September 19th 2022

Hi TMMILLEA,

Thanks for your feedback.

Here's the revisions you asked for:

https://imgur.com/a/CtvazZP

For the organic intersections, yeah I see what you mean about the contour lines. I tried to be more careful this time.

For the form intersections, I did what you asked and drew fewer forms.

(But I don't really see the issue with what I did before. The instructions specifically said "fill up the whole damn page" and "it will get visually confusing, but push through it". That's what I was trying to do. If there's some kind of upper limit on the number of forms we're supposed to draw, it should be noted in the lesson/homework description.)

  • Sky
1:32 AM, Saturday September 24th 2022

I see what you are saying about the instructions. I got the exact same critique on my lesson from a Patreon critique, which is why I gave it here. I think maybe they should reconsider the language they use because it does seem to incentivize students rushing to get a lot of shapes on these form intersections.

But well done on the revisions. Your forms feel much more solid in both intersection exercises. The extra time you took on each form really shows here.

Next Steps:

Move on to Lesson 3!

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