Lupursian

Yeah, that was weird. Thanks for submitting it. Definitely see an improvement here. Wonderful work. I'll go on and mark this lesson as complete so you can move on to the next lesson.

Thanks so much for the critique! And I appreciate you breaking down the purpose of the exercise for me.

Of course!

Sorry, I don't see it.

Sure! Send them other. It is no bother at all.

Nicely done on all of these. I think you did fine on the number of contour lines and ellipses per sausage. Just keep in mind that as you continue to practice, you may find yourself using less contour lines or ellipses to enforce 3D forms.

As for the organic intersections, it looks very good. I can tell that you focused on how the shadows fall of each other. There are a few that still need a little work. The one on the bottom left has its shadow more attached to it when it should be more on the floor. And the middle one also could use a cast shadow on the floor.

All that being said, great improvement. I'm fine passing you for this lesson. Keep on practicing these in warm ups.

Hey there! Congrats on finishing lesson 3.

Arrows: Great job on the overlap, as well as the varying size. Not only does this sell perspective, but it also sells the illusion of 3D. One thing to keep in mind is how hatching works. Make sure it is consistent with how the arrow flows. I saw inconsistency only on the bottom left arrow and the middle right arrow.

Leaves: Wonderful work on the structure and flow line of the leaves. They didn't look stiff. Plus, you did well in overlapping the edges. Feel free to allow more leaves to overlap in future warm ups.

Branches: Overall, nicely done. There is a bit of tailing, especially at the ends. It seems that you have a tendency to overshoot. Similar to the lesson 1 exercises, when you are drawing strokes, look at where you are ending and do your best to pick up when you get there. Another thing I saw is that most of your ellipses look similar in degrees. Remember that since it functures like a sausage, it will vary in contour throughout its shape. One end of the branch should have a fatter ellipse, and the other end should have a skinnier ellipses. And you should also convey the change in degrees throughout the branch. Keep that in mind in future warm ups.

Plants: Overall, I love the work you did on your plants. The textures and shadows look nice, and the construction looks pretty solid. Continue working on your branches. Along with what I mentioned previously, it seems that they aren't drawn confidently. Remember that the stroke should be confident, even if it is off by a little. That is much easier said than done, but it does get easier with time. For more of your petals and leaves, the flow line is still apparent. On flower 5, there is a bit of stiffness with the petals, so remember to convey the flow line, even if the petal looks straight. There may be a bit of a curve near the end. Also, for the ink cap mushroom, it might be best to leave off the shading for the "ink drops" at the ends of the caps. As you continue with these lessons, you may notice that shading things because of their color may confuse it with the shadow and textures that they have. In an instance like this, it is best to still draw the "ink drop" structure, but leave it without color and focus on shading the textures of the mushroom cap instead.

All-in-all, great work. Continue on the next lesson!

Hey, I'll be looking at your submission.

Organic Arrows: On the first page, you seemed to be afraid to overlap the edges, but this got better with the second page. In future warm-ups, work on getting more confident with overlapping. This sells the idea of a drawing being in 3D. Also, hatching tends to be inconsistent on some arrows. One thing to remember is that you should hatch on the part of the arrow that is being overlapped. If there is no overlap, or the part is doing the overlapping, it should not be hatched.

Organic Forms with Contours: While I can see the ellipses on the dissections exercise, I would appreciate seeing this without all the textures to better appreciate the ellipses. If you have that picture before doing dissections, please submit that. If not, I would recommend doing another page of contour forms with ellipses. For the page with contour lines, the contour lines look mostly fine, as they hook around, but you should make sure that they vary as you go through the sausage form. Most of these contour lines have the same degree. Furthermore, you do not want to use a lot of contour lines for a sausage. Depending on size, you should use three max for a small sausage and five (maybe six) for a big sausage. What happens is that not only do you not have the space to vary the degrees of the contour lines, but you also ruin the illusion of 3D when you "overemphasize" the curviness of the sausage. You did a good job in showing that the contour changes direction when the sausage bends, so keep that up. However, I would recommend doing another page of organic forms with contour lines and focusing on conveying the form with 3-5 contour lines.

Texture Analysis: You did really well in capturing shadows with the implicit method. And your transition into light looks remarkable. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure the transition from dark to texture is much smoother. You don't want a stark dark to light; it should blend in.

Dissections: For most of these textures, you managed to capture implicit shadows well, too. Some that I really liked were the tentacles, the coconut, and the ice cream. There were some textures that look less implicit and more explicit, basically you drawing what was there. One good example is the pizza texture. This one is a little difficult because in order to convey the texture, you have to draw the food that is there. However, it is still possible. You can convey the texture by focusing on the overlapping pepperonis or toppings. You could also do a cheese pizza texture by focusing on the broiled/brown spots on the pizza. One other suggestion is focusing on one slice instead of the whole pizza. Or maybe you can focus on the crust, as that might be easier to convey. Another example is the fur texture, which is also a difficult texture. Uncomfortable gets into this in a future lesson, but fur texture is not just zigzag lines or spikes. It is important to draw each tuft like it is unique, because it is. It is similar to the grass texture. Now, since you are practicing implicit shadows, this can be a little difficult, but keep in mind if you are drawing animals in the future that drawing the fur texture depends on drawing a tuft singly.

Form Intersections: Good intersections overall. If you decide to do this as warm up in the future, feel free to push the intersections more and allow the forms to "interact" more by pushing them closer. This challenges your mind to figure out how they interact, but it is a fun challenge. You tend to use a lot of dramatic foreshortening in this exercise. Be cautious of this in future warm-ups, because it can be jarring to have several dramatic foreshortened forms intersection each other with shallow foreshortened forms also in the mix. It would be better to focus more on shallow foreshortening in all these forms for future warm-ups. Finally, hatching shouldn't be used to convey intersections; it is used to show which side of the plane is facing us. Also, it is optional, so you don't have to hatch if you don't want to. Just keep this in mind for future exercises that involve hatching.

Organic Intersections: The sausages and contour lines look fine here. It does seem that you struggle to figure out where to place shadows; there are even some sausages that lack shadow when they should have it. As a rule of thumb, any sausages on the bottom should have a cast shadow; this establishes what surface they are on and forms the basic for the structure itself. As for the other sausages, it is best to place the sausages first before placing the shadow. This forces your brain to figure out how the shadows will interact with the surfaces. They shouldn't just be straight and stiff; they should conform to the curved surface if the shadow is falling on a curved surface. In addition to that, it would be best to limit yourself to 6-8 sausages per page so you can better track how the sausages fall on each other and how their shadows interact. I would recommend doing one more page of organic intersections and limit the number of sausages to 6-8. Focus on how the shadows should fall on the surfaces for each form. Sometimes, they might not have much of a shadow.

Overall, keep up the good work. I'll place what you need to redo in the revisions section. Once again, it is one page of organic forms with ellipses, one page of organic forms with contour lines, and one page of organic intersections.

Hey there! I'll be reviewing your Lesson 2 submission.

Organic Arrows: These arrows look pretty confident. There are a few things you can continue to work on. Keep track of where you place your hatching. On many of your arrows, they are very inconsistent, sometimes falling in areas where hatching isn't necessary. One thing to keep in mind is that hatching is supposed the represent the shadow of the part of the arrow crossing over itself. If one part has another part overlapping it, the part being overlapped needs the hatching. I would recommend practicing this as a warm up.

Organic Forms with Contours: You seem to understand how ellipses and contour lines should be drawn, but not how they conform inside the sausage. In several instances, the ellipses are drawn with similar degrees, which wouldn't accurate represent what it would look like to cut through one of these sausages. The contour lines are a little better, but they still run into the same problem of having similar degrees. One thing I noticed is that your sausages are either elongates or sharply curved. In Uncomfortable's lesson, he wanted us to draw sausages that were equal length throughout so we could better understand how to draw the ellipses. Click this to see what I'm talking about, as well as what is not recommended. I would recommend redoing one sheet of organic forms with contours, but mostly focusing on redoing the ellipses section. I think the contour lines can be practiced with during warm ups.

Texture Analysis: Well done on this section. You managed to capture the shadows well implicitly. The only thing I'll add is to make sure that the dark side blends in smoothly. You managed to do this with the paper texture and the bark texture, but the cheese texture could be a little smoother in the transition.

Dissections: These were excellently done. You not only continued to convey textures implicitly, but you allowed them to pop off the sausage to make them feel more 3D. I have nothing more to add.

Form Intersections: You did well in drawing the shapes confidently, as well as with your intersections. There were a few places where you struggled, but overall, you grasped how the forms interact with each other. One thing I'll add that only popped up once in your drawings: make sure to only hatch the bottom part of the cone and not the rest of its surface.

Organic Intersections: Once again, good forms on all of these. The contours look well-placed and sell the idea that they are 3D. The sausages also seem to conform well to each other. None look stiff or out-of-place. (There was that one sausage on the second page, but it's alright.) Plus, the shadows were placed well. You kept in mind what surface they were falling on and made sure to convey that.

Overall, nicely done. I would like for you to redo the organic forms with contour ellipses for one more page before I approve you to move on.

Hey, thanks for being patient. If that is the case, it might just be something that gets better with practice. I remember that I used to have an issue with that, and sometimes I get those "caved-in" ellipses occasionally. However, if you are ghosting and being confident with your strokes, then I think you will get better to where that issue becomes less frequent.