CritiquesForReference

That is completely normal. Drawing involves a lot of thinking, and it can really be quite overwhelming - especially when I'm outlining all of these things you need to work on. Getting stressed and having it cause you to forget important points is entirely normal.

What may help is to read through the critique (while looking at your drawing and trying to identify what I'm talking about on your drawing), then taking a break. Come back to it later - like perhaps the next day - and try doing the same thing again. Then you can try doing another drawing, and compare it to the critique you'd received, see what you'd actually ended up improving upon, and what may have been forgotten. You may then wish to give it another shot the following day, if many elements were missed.

This is not an actual critique for this work and should be used purely for reference only

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/kXNtIXn

Nice work! You've largely done a pretty good job, with a few things that I'd like to point out to keep you on the right track.

Starting with your arrows, they flow fairly well, but one key issue especially with the top two is that the gaps between the zigzagging sections don't compress in a manner consistent with how the arrow is moving back into space. It's fair to say that this arrow is moving somewhat erratically, but all the same, don't be afraid to let those sections overlap one another, and for that spacing to compress very quickly. It will help demonstrate the depth of the scene as a whole.

Moving onto your leaves, I think you've done a pretty great job of carrying over the sense of flow from your arrows to these concrete objects. Most students get caught up in the fact that they're drawing something real for once and it causes them to stiffen up. Instead of focusing on establishing how these leaves each sit statically in space, you've gone one step further and captured how they move through the space they occupy. Well done.

Just one tiny point - the one you labelled "fig?" has you only drawing each leaf where it would be visible (ie: not overlapped by its neighbours). Make sure you draw each one in its entirety, as though you have x-ray vision. That applies in general.

For your branches, you're largely doing a good job, and in many cases you're managing to get the segments to flow smoothly into one another. This isn't entirely consistent, but honestly I don't really expect students to be able to manage this just yet. One thing that can help reduce the visible "tails" however is to make a point of using them as a runway for your next segment. By this I mean overlapping them directly before shooting off towards your next target.

Moving onto your plant constructions, these are mostly very well done. You're pretty thorough when it comes to your use of construction, and you don't tend to stiffen up at all. As a result, your forms flow nicely, and when appropriate they appear solid. There are just a few things I'd like to mention:

• For your flower pots, don't forget that each one will have thickness, or a "lip" at its opening. You're often just drawing the mouth of the pots with a single ellipse, which makes them appear paper thin like this one. Placing another ellipse inset within that one (which admittedly is not easy) will help create the slightest impression of thickness, making it seem more like a real 3D object.

• For this one, don't let the lines just stop if the form is cut off. Actually cut it off - that is, as though you'd cut the form with a blade, cap off its bottom, in this case with another ellipse as though the pot were much shorter. This will ensure that the form feels three dimensional, whereas it would flatten out if left open like that. As a side point, nice work focusing on the cast shadows of the little bits at the base of the plant. One thing that can continue to help with this (as well as the use of cast shadows on the plant construction itself) is to try and remember where your light source is going to be, and keeping your shadows consistent with that (always having the shadows fall on one side, for example).

• For the leaves on this page, you ended up breaking away from adhering closely to the earlier phases of construction, and instead treated them too loosely. This sort of zigzagging around the basic structure is an issue I address in these notes. Similar problem here, where you're basically skipping steps, trying to put information down that the existing structure on the page cannot yet support.

• The little flower-bulbs in this drawing really do seem like the stars of the drawing, but they end up being given fairly little space, causing them to come out rather cramped. As a result, you didn't have much room for your brain to think through their spatial problems. In this case, I'd recommend zeroing in on just a few of them (or even just one) and allowing them/it to take up more of the overall page.

All in all, definitely a lot of good work, with a handful of things to keep an eye on. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

This is not an actual critique for this lesson and should be used purely for reference only

Source; https://imgur.com/a/77eVv1s

Starting with your arrows, they flow quite fluidly through space and explore all three dimensions fairly well. One thing to keep in mind though is that the spacing between the zigzagging sections should compress more consistently as we look farther back in space. That is, the first gap can be large, then every one after it should get smaller. If you look at examples like the arrow at the very top of your first page, you'll notice that your second gap is quite small and the third is bigger once again - this is the sort of thing that can feel off to the viewer.

Moving onto your organic forms with contour ellipses, you're doing a pretty good job at sticking to simple sausage forms as directed in the instructions, and you're also doing pretty well at keeping your ellipses snug between the edges of the sausage's silhouette. Some of your ellipses do get a little bit uneven though - often coming to a point along one end, rather than being properly rounded, so continue to keep an eye on that. Also, it seems to me that the degree you choose for your ellipses may be somewhat arbitrary. There are definitely places where the degree shifts along the length of the sausages (which it ought to), but the way in which it changes doesn't always seem correct.

The degree of these contour ellipses corresponds to its orientation in space relative to the viewer, and generally you're going to find that if your sausage is relatively straight, the degree is going to widen as we slide along the form to get further away from the viewer. If the sausage curves however, it can get a little more complicated. This diagram https://imgur.com/vg0vy0v may help explain the concept. This all applies to your organic forms with contour curves as well, so keep an eye on that.

I think your texture analyses came out very well. You've done an excellent job of focusing on the core principles behind this exercise - that is, on the idea that our marks are all shadow shapes rather than individual outlines. You're demonstrating an excellent willingness to think more in terms of those cast shadows, and to control the density of those marks without changing the nature of the texture you're communicating. Very well done.

This continues onto your dissections as well, where you've experimented with a great many different kinds of textures while also doing a pretty good job of wrapping them around these rounded forms.

Moving onto your form intersections, not only have you done a good job of drawing these forms such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space (which is the main focus of the exercise), you also did an excellent job with the intersections themselves. This aspect is something we're merely introducing at this point - I want students to familiarize themselves with the fact that forms can intersect with one another, and to start thinking about how the line that defines that relationship in space can be drawn, but without actually expecting them to be able to draw that intersection line correctly. Spatial relationships are a concept that we're going to continue to develop over this entire course, so it's entirely normal for students to struggle with this so early on. That said, I think you're making excellent progress with those intersection lines, and are demonstrating spatial reasoning skills that are coming along well. This puts you at an advantage as you move forwards.

Lastly, your organic intersections do a great job of capturing the impression of forms that slump and sag against one another in three dimensions, rather than simply sitting as flat shapes pasted on top of one another on a page. Watch out for the little gaps of space you have underneath your forms however - always try and think in terms of how gravity and physics will cause those forms to weigh heavily upon one another. There are circumstances where this can leave gaps, but I did notice a few places on your second page where it gave the impression of weightlessness for some of your sausage forms. The first page was much better in this regard however.

So! All in all, your work is quite well done. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

This is not an actual critique for this lesson and should be used purely for reference only

Source: https://imgur.com/a/94KWWMx

Hey there ".....". You aren't the first person to get mad at this challenge and you won't be the last, haha! All good. Let's get to it.

So your mindset definitely seems to have changed by the end of this challenge, as indicated by your lines and general approach. There is a lot less rushing at the end made apparent by things like your hatching and overall line quality. You did improve a lot in terms of understanding convergences and such, even if it doesn't feel like it. Your boxes on a string were nice and a good challenge and turned out relatively well. (The trick to these is that all the boxes share a horizon, so all their different vps (well, 2 out of 3) should lie on that shared horizon, but I won't belabor that right now unless you want to know more).

So like I said, you made a lot of growth. Your boxes feel more solid and you definitely have a better intuition now. There's a lot less skewing of the back lines and what you do have is more manageable. So regarding back lines, and overall converging lines, uncomfortable has made this infographic https://imgur.com/8PqQLE0. The main take away of this is that we must change how we look at parallel lines in perspective. Often times we focus too much on individual lines and not enough on them as the ensemble they are. They are all related to one another via the vanishing point and when that moves, the angles between the lines change. This means whenever drawing a line you must take into account all the other parallel lines. You did a good job of this so I won't belabor the point, but if you have any questions about this let me know. Overall though you did a nice job. You followed instructions and made it through. Your mindset changed, which is an important thing we hope to see in our students.

So with this, your time in the box mines is complete and the challenge will be marked as such. Congratulations! In your warm ups don't neglect box practice even though the next few lessons are very organic - you don't want to be rusty come lesson 6.

This is not an actual critique for this lesson and should be used purely for reference only'

Source: https://imgur.com/a/naXmTQz'

Hi "..." , I'll be doing your critique today. Forgive me if I repeat a lot of what you already have heard - that critique was very thorough

Starting with your super imposed lines you are doing a good job of executing your lines confidently and swiftly. With time and practice in your warm ups you should start to try and tighten up your grouping by finding a speed that works for you but overall you're off to a good start. With your ghosted lines you are generally understanding and applying the core concepts with only a little bit of arcing. Your lines tend to have a hiccup at the end as you try to stop at your target. Instead of stopping your line abruptly try to lift your pen up at that end goal. It is easier to lift the pen up than it is to fight the inertia of your arm and the muscle memory ghosted has put into it. It also has the added benefit of giving your lines a nice taper at the end which adds visual interest.

Moving on to your ellipses you've made some good progress overall. They are shaped nicely, with no points or flat regions and you are understanding how to draw through them the correct number of times. Your follow up passes are relatively tight on the initial ellipse and things aren't getting too sloppy. With your ellipses in planes you do a good job hitting all the appropriate points on the edges to make the ellipse sit snugly within the bounds. Your ellipses in tables are also nicely packed to leave no room for ambiguity and you do a good job exploring different sizes and orientations. With your ellipses in planes, your ellipses are a little more challenged due to having so many constraints but you do a good job keeping your minor axes aligned to the funnel axes.

Your rough perspective boxes are quite nice. You do a great job being mindful of the orientation of all of your lines - keeping your horizontals parallel to the horizon and verticals perpendicular and the result is a box oriented correctly for one point perspective. Your converging lines are on the right track and you have correctly applied your extension lines. With time and practice your accuracy to far off points will increase but for now the accuracy is right where we expect. Some of your lines are wobbly showing that it's harder for you to draw these short lines with your shoulder. This is totally normal and just keep practicing. You do a good job not redrawing any of your lines and you are keeping things neat.

You really knocked the rotated boxes out of the park, to be honest. We don't require nor expect students to do a "good" job on this exercise and our only goal is for students to finish it to the best of their abilities so they can be introduced to new types of spatial problems and ways to go about solving them, but you went above that and are understanding all of the underlying concepts introduced and applying everything taught in this section. Your boxes are clearly rotating, you keep your boxes tightly packed so you can leverage adjacent lines as perspective guides, and you drew through all of your boxes. You kept everything neat despite it's complexity and you drew everything nice and big. The only thing I can find to nit pick is your overall line quality - continue practicing ghosting and confidently executing those short lines with your shoulder. Overall though great job here.

Finally let's take a look at organic perspective. Your boxes are well drawn and your compositions are energetic. You do a good job conveying three dimensional space through a combination of scaling your boxes for a clear foreground and midground as well as overlapping your forms to make them appear to occupy the same space. One thing that breaks that illusion is some of your boxes have too much foreshortening which makes them appear to exist in a different space. More on that is explained here. Your understanding of perspective and sense of convergence is on the right track and will continue to improve with the box challenge. One thing I do want to point out is here you start to redraw some lines and that is a habit you should get out of before it sets in. Redrawing lines only serves to draw more attention to mistakes and instead we must prepare each line carefully and only execute when ready to live with the results. This is one of many reasons we use ink in these lessons.